Pope Leo laughs his way out of tough spot with Rome basketball games
Pope Leo XIV addressed about 7,000 students, faculty members, and fans from Villanova University and the University of Notre Dame at the Vatican. The two Catholic universities’ men’s and women’s basketball teams are scheduled to open the 2026–27 season with a doubleheader in Rome on November 1. Villanova president Father Peter Donohue and Notre Dame president Father Robert Dowd attended the audience; Dowd concluded his remarks with “Go Irish!”.
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Pope Leo XIV met with about 7,000 students, faculty members and fans from Villanova and Notre Dame at the Vatican on October 31, ahead of the universities’ men’s and women’s basketball doubleheader in Rome the following day. He joked about the rivalry and used his own name to avoid choosing a side, then spoke about sport as a way to bring people together and practice virtue.
The teams were in Rome to open the 2026–27 basketball season. Villanova is Leo’s alma mater, while Notre Dame president Father Robert Dowd ended his remarks to the Pope with “Go Irish!”
Leo recalled hearing “Go Irish” while growing up on Chicago’s South Side, then noted that “Prevost graduated from Villanova.” He said the Pope does not take sides, adding with a laugh that “Prevost has another opinion, but we won’t do that now.”
Beyond the banter, Leo told the gathering that athletics can foster cooperation and mutual sharing, especially in a time when technology can create distance between people. He also said that competitors, despite their rivalry, “are certainly not enemies.”
With the visit taking place on the eve of All Saints’ Day, Leo connected sport to the pursuit of holiness. He cited Pier Giorgio Frassati, a patron saint of athletes, and said that, like athletic achievement, holiness requires daily effort.
Leo encouraged the visitors to see their athletic activities and pilgrimage to the tombs of the Apostles in light of a goal beyond winning a particular event: “the prize of everlasting life.”
Catholic higher education integrates athletics with holistic human formation
Catholic higher education can treat athletics not as a distraction from learning, but as one setting in which students grow as whole persons. The key is that sport must serve the dignity and development of the athlete—not make a person’s worth depend on performance, victories, or marketability. The Church’s account of sport therefore connects physical training with intellectual, moral, social, and spiritual formation.
“The human person who is created in the image and likeness of God is more important than sport. The person does not exist to serve sport, but rather sport should serve the human person in his or her integral development.”
This principle gives athletics a place within Catholic education because the human person is not merely a mind receiving instruction or a body trained to compete. The Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life describes the person as a unity of body, soul, and spirit, and observes that play and sport can educate the whole person—what a student thinks, feels, and does. In that sense, athletics can complement classroom learning rather than stand apart from it.
Sport also offers practical occasions to form character. Training requires discipline and perseverance; competition tests how a person responds to limits, success, failure, and the demands of shared rules. Team sports make interdependence visible, while even individual sports rely on the contributions of coaches, teammates, opponents, and others. The Church’s reflection presents sport as a way people can experience both personal freedom and responsibility to a community.
That educational promise is not automatic. Athletics contributes to human formation when institutions and coaches keep the athlete’s flourishing at the center. Excessive commercialization, treating the body as a mere instrument, or valuing a student chiefly for athletic results can distort sport and harm individuals and communities. A genuinely holistic approach seeks balance among physical, social, moral, psychological, and spiritual dimensions—not athletic achievement at the expense of the rest.
For Catholic colleges, then, the important question is not simply whether athletics is present, but how it is integrated into the institution’s educational purpose. Do students learn to compete with integrity, respect others, accept limits, and contribute to a community? Are athletes regarded first as persons, with intellectual and spiritual lives as well as physical abilities? The Church’s teaching supports athletics as a valuable educational setting when it helps answer those questions well. It does not imply that every sporting program will do so by nature; the formative result depends on how sport is practiced and governed.