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 the Eternal City Tip-Off in Rome. The Nov. 1 doubleheader will open the 2026–27 Division I college basketball season, with men’s and women’s teams from both universities playing in Rome. The university presidents addressed the pope, and student-athletes presented him with commemorative gifts, including basketballs, jerseys, and a prayer for athletes. Pope Leo described sport as a way to foster human dignity, personal development, and relationships, and said it can bring people together and benefit body and spirit. Noting the games fall on All Saints’ Day, the pope encouraged athletes to let every part of life help them love God and neighbor.
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Pope Leo XIV welcomed about 7,000 students, athletes, university representatives, and fans from Notre Dame and Villanova to 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 reflections on faith, community, and athletics. 1
The visitors filled the Pope Paul VI Audience Hall. Leo, a Villanova graduate, joked about the rivalry: he recalled hearing “Go Irish!” while growing up in Chicago, then said that, as pope, he would not take sides. He also dribbled a basketball presented by Villanova representatives. 1
The universities’ presidents, Father Peter Donohue of Villanova and Father Robert Dowd of Notre Dame, addressed the pope. Student-athletes from both schools presented him with commemorative basketballs and jerseys, along with a prayer for athletes written by the late Notre Dame president Father Theodore Hesburgh. 1
Leo described sport as a way to support human dignity and development, education, and relationships. With the games scheduled for All Saints’ Day, he said athletic pursuits should help people love God and neighbor, and called sport “a concrete means of bringing people together” in an era when technology can create distance. 1
Before the audience, supporters attended a Marian Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, presided over by Philadelphia Archbishop Nelson Perez and concelebrated by the two university presidents. In his homily, Perez praised student-athletes’ discipline, perseverance, and sacrifice, and presented Mary’s humility and service as examples of “true greatness.” 1
Attendees described the Vatican events as a meeting point for basketball and Catholic faith. Notre Dame student Ambrose Weidmann said the audience and Mass gave students—including some who were atheist or agnostic—an opportunity to hear the Church’s message. 1
The Nov. 1 “Eternal City Tip-Off,” organized in collaboration with Fox Sports, On Location, and Players Era, features men’s and women’s games between the universities. The men’s game is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. CET, followed by the women’s game at 6 p.m. CET. 1*
Catholic theology frames sport as formation in virtue and community
The claim captures an important Catholic view: sport can be more than exercise or entertainment. Properly ordered, it can train people in virtues, teach them to live by shared rules, and build relationships that extend beyond the playing field. But the Church’s view is conditional, not naïve: sport forms people well only when it respects human dignity and resists forces such as dishonesty, exclusion, and commercial exploitation.
The Catholic account begins with the person, not with winning. Sport is valued as a human activity that can foster temperance, humility, courage, and patience, and can draw people toward experiences of beauty, goodness, and joy. The Church’s 2018 document Giving the Best of Yourself describes this as an “integral” development: sport engages the person as a whole rather than treating the body as a machine or the athlete merely as a performer.
That formation happens through concrete practices. Training can require perseverance and self-restraint; competition asks participants to accept rules and recognize the legitimate claims of others. The document also identifies sport as a setting in which young people can grow in the cardinal virtues—fortitude, temperance, prudence, and justice. In simple terms, these concern courage and endurance, moderation, sound judgment, and giving others their due. Sport does not guarantee those qualities, but it can provide occasions to practice them.
Fair play is especially significant because it goes beyond avoiding a penalty. A player might obey the written rules while still acting unjustly—for example, by using a concealed advantage or exploiting an opponent’s vulnerability. The Catholic account therefore links fair play to respect for the other person’s freedom and dignity. The competitor is not simply an obstacle to defeat, but another person with whom one shares the game.
“Sporting activity ‘must be an unavoidable occasion to practice human and Christian virtues of solidarity, loyalty, good behavior and respect for others, who must be seen as competitors and not as mere opponents or rivals.’”
This distinction does not reject competition. Rather, it places competition within a moral framework: the contest matters, but it should not make victory the highest good. The document presents perseverance, justice, and courtesy as values sport can teach both within and beyond the event itself. Athletes, in this sense, can become examples to others when they carry these habits into family and social life.
Sport also offers a practical lesson in how individuality and community belong together. Rules limit what a player may do, but they make the shared activity possible; within them, participants can exercise freedom and creativity. The document argues that this dynamic shows how a person can develop through relationships rather than in isolation. Even individual sports depend on the contributions of others, while team sports make cooperation especially visible.
The community of sport is not limited to teammates. Christian solidarity can include an opponent who needs help, even when helping does nothing to improve one’s chance of winning. That matters because solidarity is more than loyalty to one’s own side: the document connects it to the common good and to overcoming divisions among peoples and cultures.
Sporting clubs and teams can also offer a counterweight to isolation. The Church’s document describes them as settings where people encounter one another, help one another, compete with mutual esteem, and form friendships. It particularly emphasizes inclusion: participation should not be reserved only for the most talented, and sport should make room for people with different abilities. In this way, belonging is not merely a reward for excellence; it can itself help form a community.
The same activity can cultivate virtue or undermine it. If sport is dominated by winning at any cost, manipulated for advantage, or treated chiefly as a commercial product, its educational promise is weakened. The Church’s document explicitly calls for sport to be protected from dishonesty, manipulation, and commercial abuse, and says that respect for human dignity is essential to sport’s positive role.
It also matters whether sport remains play. Pope Francis’s words, quoted in the document, insist that sport should remain a game if it is to benefit body and spirit. The point is not that sport must be unserious: discipline and excellence have their place. Rather, when pressure, money, or status extinguishes the freedom and joy of play, sport risks becoming merely an instrument for other ends. The document presents play as a setting for creativity, learning, and working together.
So “sport forms virtue” is best read as a claim about possibility and responsibility, not an automatic result. Coaches, athletes, schools, families, clubs, and institutions shape whether the experience teaches respect and solidarity or rewards selfishness and exploitation. The Church’s interest is therefore not just in encouraging people to play, but in helping create sporting environments that serve the person.
For Catholic theology, sport can also reveal something about the human condition. It brings together strength and limitation, freedom and discipline, individual talent and dependence on others, body and soul. Success is never fully guaranteed, and a person’s worth cannot be reduced to performance. The document presents these tensions as opportunities to reflect on human freedom, dependence, and the search for meaning—not as proof that athletic achievement itself makes someone holy.
This is why the Church sees sport as a possible setting for pastoral and educational work. Games and physical activity can help introduce young people to Scripture, Church teaching, or the sacraments, while a Christian sporting environment can encourage personal accompaniment and mutual respect. Sport may also bring together people across cultural or religious differences, making it a place to build bridges and serve the unity of the human family.
The headline’s central idea, then, is well grounded in the Church’s account: sport can educate people in virtue and form communities of cooperation, friendship, and solidarity. Its Catholic value lies not simply in physical excellence or victory, but in whether the way it is practiced helps people treat themselves and others with dignity.