Pope Leo XIV welcomes thousands from Notre Dame, Villanova to Vatican ahead of historic game
Pope Leo XIV welcomed about 7,000 students, athletes, and fans from Villanova University and the University of Notre Dame to the Vatican ahead of their Rome basketball doubleheader. The Eternal City Tip-Off on Nov. 1 will open the 2026–27 college basketball season for the schools’ men’s and women’s teams. Leo praised sport as a way to bring people together and support human development, and urged attendees to let athletics help them love God and neighbor. The university delegations attended Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica and presented the pope with basketball memorabilia and a prayer for athletes.
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Pope Leo XIV welcomed about 7,000 students, athletes, university representatives, and fans from Villanova and Notre Dame at the Vatican on Oct. 31, ahead of a Rome doubleheader opening the 2026–27 college basketball season. The gathering combined the schools’ sporting event with Mass and a papal address on faith, human dignity, and the role of sport.
The audience took place in the Pope Paul VI Audience Hall, where Leo greeted delegations from both universities. The pope, a Villanova graduate, joked about the rivalry, recalling that he grew up hearing “Go Irish!” in Chicago before adding that he would not take sides.
Villanova president Father Peter Donohue and Notre Dame president Father Robert Dowd addressed the pope on behalf of their schools. Student-athletes presented him with commemorative basketballs, jerseys, and a prayer for athletes written by the late Notre Dame president Father Theodore Hesburgh; Leo drew cheers as he dribbled a basketball.
Leo described the Church’s vision of sport as grounded in human dignity, personal development, education, and relationships. He said sport can bring people together, particularly amid the distance created by technology, and called it “a medicine for both body and spirit when it is practiced well.”
With the games scheduled for All Saints’ Day, the pope said the feast recalls that everyone is called to holiness. He urged those present to let every part of life, including athletic pursuits, help them love God and their neighbors.
Before the audience, participants attended a Mass honoring the Blessed Virgin Mary in St. Peter’s Basilica. Archbishop Nelson Perez of Philadelphia presided, with the university presidents concelebrating; in his homily, Perez used St. Paul’s writing about athletic competition to connect sport with spiritual life and presented Mary’s humility and service as examples of greatness.
The Eternal City Tip-Off, organized by Fox Sports, On Location, and Players Era, is set for Sunday, Nov. 1. Notre Dame and Villanova’s men’s teams are scheduled to play at 3:30 p.m. local time, followed by the women’s game at 6 p.m.; the article said the games would air on Fox and FS1, respectively.
Sport’s role in human flourishing and Christian community
Sport can serve human flourishing and Christian community when it is treated not as an end in itself, but as an activity ordered to the good of the whole person. It engages the body while forming habits of discipline, courage, fairness, and cooperation; it brings people into relationships that can cross social and cultural boundaries; and it can open participants to beauty, joy, and questions of meaning. But sport’s benefits are not automatic: they depend on whether people and institutions put human dignity ahead of victory, profit, or prestige.
A Christian understanding of flourishing does not separate bodily life from moral, social, and spiritual life. Sport makes their connection especially visible. Training involves physical effort, but also patience and self-control; competition tests skill, but also how a person handles limits, failure, and another person’s success. The Church’s document Giving the Best of Yourself therefore presents sport as a possible setting for the harmonious development of the person—not simply a way to improve fitness or win.
Sport also teaches a realistic understanding of human strength. Athletes can discover abilities and creativity, yet they also encounter fatigue, vulnerability, and the fact that success is never guaranteed. That experience can help resist the illusion that a person is self-sufficient or valuable only when performing at a high level. Properly understood, bodily ability is a gift to develop and share, not a measure of someone’s worth.
The freedom involved in sport is likewise shaped by limits. Players can make creative choices, but within rules that make the game possible for everyone. Accepting those rules is not the opposite of freedom; it can make a shared exercise of freedom possible. Sport thus offers a practical lesson in living with both personal initiative and obligations to others.
Sport can form character because it calls for repeated choices: whether to practice when improvement is slow, respect a decision that goes against one’s team, play fairly when cheating might bring an advantage, or respond well to a loss. The Church document specifically identifies sport as a setting in which young people can grow in the cardinal virtues—prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. In simple terms, these involve sound judgment, fairness, perseverance in difficulty, and self-restraint.
This formation is strongest when sport remains play, rather than becoming only a vehicle for adult ambition or institutional success. The document stresses that playfulness is not trivial: it can encourage creativity, learning, and working together. Sport can be demanding and competitive while still preserving joy and the freedom to participate for its own human value.
Joy, moreover, is not limited to winning. People may find it in movement, learning a skill, belonging to a team, or sharing an activity with others. For dedicated athletes, joy may coexist with effort and sacrifice. This can teach that worthwhile commitments are not always effortless—and that achievement is not the only good sport offers.
Sport can create community because it places people in a common activity with shared rules and goals. Team members depend on one another; even individual athletes rely on coaches, opponents, officials, and supporters. The result can be friendship and mutual respect that extend beyond the field. The Church document describes sport as a possible “culture of encounter”: a way for people from different backgrounds to meet and cooperate.
That community is genuinely Christian in character when it refuses to make belonging conditional on being the most talented, strongest, or successful. A parish or school sports program, for example, can ask not only how to develop skilled players, but how to welcome those who are beginners, less able, or otherwise easily overlooked. The document puts the point forcefully:
“Everyone gets to play, not just the best, with the advantages and the limitations that each has, indeed, focusing on the disadvantaged, as Jesus did.”
This does not mean every sporting context must make every participant equally skilled or that competition itself is unchristian. It means that competition should take place within mutual esteem, and that the dignity of participants must not depend on the scoreboard. The goal is not to eliminate excellence, but to pursue excellence without treating people as disposable when they cannot contribute to victory.
The Church sees sport as capable of pointing beyond itself. The beauty of a well-played game, the discipline of training, and the experience of shared effort can prompt reflection on gifts, limits, joy, and the human search for meaning. In Christian understanding, ultimate happiness is found not in sporting achievement but in God’s love and mercy, lived in relationship with Jesus Christ and within the community of faith. Sport can be a place where people encounter questions that lead toward that deeper meaning; it is not a substitute for faith or the source of salvation.
This distinction helps avoid two errors. One is to dismiss sport as merely physical or unworthy of serious spiritual attention. The other is to treat it as if success, fame, or athletic identity could provide the fullness of life. The Church’s approach is neither rejection nor uncritical approval: it seeks to respect and elevate sport so that it serves the person and supports integral development.
Sport can harm people and communities when its priorities are reversed. Excessive commercialization, exploitation, or a fixation on results can make the athlete seem like a tool or commodity. A narrow focus on physical performance can also obscure the person’s moral, social, and spiritual needs. The Church document therefore insists that sport be directed toward the person’s good, not merely toward profit or achievement.
The practical test is whether the sporting culture protects dignity, encourages fair play, welcomes a range of abilities, and helps participants grow in their relationships and character. Coaches, parents, administrators, schools, and parishes all influence whether sport becomes a setting for human formation or an environment of pressure and exclusion. The Church accordingly sees a role for pastoral involvement in sport—not to turn every game into a religious exercise, but to help ensure that sporting life serves people and can become a place of encounter and human development.
In this vision, sport matters because people matter. At its best, it helps individuals develop their gifts while learning dependence, self-restraint, and solidarity. It strengthens communities when people can compete seriously without losing respect for one another, and when participation and belonging are not reserved for the strongest.