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VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Notre Dame and Villanova will face off this weekend to open the men’s and women’s college basketball seasons in Rome under the first U.S.-born pope, bringing a distinctly American combination of sports and Catholic pride to the Eternal City.
Pope Leo XIV graduated from Villanova in 1977 and shares its Augustinian identity, but he was born in Chicago, not far from the Notre Dame campus in South Bend, Indiana. The pope has avoided taking sides in the upcoming games, but he told journalists on the plane to France in September that he had heard that more people from Villanova were coming to see the match.
“The voice of the people of God will be very strong on the Villanova side,” he said.
The unprecedented event will showcase the rivalry between the two Catholic universities on and off the court, as both expand their visibility and deepen their Vatican connections under Leo.
“Pope Leo is going to be very interested in the game,” Ed Hastings, a Villanova theology professor and former basketball player, told RNS.
“I’m sure he’s not going to say who he’s hoping to win,” he added. “But we know it’s Villanova.”
The “Eternal City Tip-Off” will pit the schools’ men’s and women’s teams against each other in a doubleheader Sunday (Nov. 1) at the Palazzo dello Sport in Rome, with the men’s game set for 9:30 a.m. ET and the women to follow at noon. It’s unlikely that the pope, who recently recovered from surgery to treat cancer in his right lung, will personally attend the games, which organizers say will draw more than 7,000 people.
But Leo will have a private meeting with the teams and their families at the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican on Saturday (Oct. 31), preceded by a private Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica celebrated by Archbishop Nelson J. Pérez of Philadelphia, home to Villanova.
The pregame party at Rome’s Spazio Novecento, promising food, drinks and university “spirit groups,” is sold out, while other events and student gatherings will enliven the city in the days leading up to the games. Fans will cheer from across the Atlantic at campus viewing parties and alumni watch events worldwide.
For the athletes, the prospect of encountering the pope and being at the Vatican provides elevated enthusiasm for the season opener.
Villanova guard Kelsey Joens said she passes by a large poster of the pope every day when she walks to class, a reminder that someone who once studied at the university is now the leader of 1.4 billion Catholics around the globe.
“Just having the pope from your school,” she told RNS, “it just brings … a different vibe around it.”
A Catholic raised in the Midwest, Notre Dame guard Ethan Roberts said during a press conference on Oct. 22 that he drew strength from the prospect of playing in Rome. “My confirmation saint was St. Peter, so St. Peter’s Basilica is going to be sweet for me to see,” he said.
Catholic universities have long occupied an outsize place in basketball culture. Holy Cross, La Salle, San Francisco, Loyola Chicago, Marquette, Georgetown and Villanova have all won men’s NCAA championships.
Villanova, despite being the smaller university, is no basketball underdog by pedigree, having won the men’s championship in 1985, 2016 and 2018. Three members of its 2016 NCAA championship squad — Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart and Mikal Bridges — are teammates on the New York Knicks, the reigning NBA champions.
This season’s Wildcats include promising freshman center Luigi Suigo, touted as a potential NBA lottery pick, who will make his Villanova debut in his home country.
With the Notre Dame men’s team rebuilding after losing three of its leading scorers, it’s the Fighting Irish women’s team that will likely be the main attraction on Sunday. Guard Hannah Hidalgo is considered a top WNBA prospect after a record-breaking 202 steals last season. The women’s basketball game will mark the first time the two teams have met since 2018.
Beyond the basketball court, the universities bring different connections to the papal court, where both schools have drawn visibility following the election of the U.S.-born pontiff. Villanova shares a personal connection to Leo, with its theologians and campus ministers describing a pope who is close to Pennsylvania.
“It’s just a really unique thing we get to enjoy here in Villanova, how much closer Vatican City is,” said David Walsh, Villanova’s campus minister for sports and spirituality.
But Notre Dame can claim an extensive institutional relationship with the Holy See. Leo has appointed two Notre Dame faculty members and a university trustee as consultors to the Vatican Dicastery for Integral Human Development and recently named theologian Khaled Anatolios to the International Theological Commission.
“I’d like to say that the competition level might be friendly, but I don’t necessarily think that’s going to be true,” Hastings said. Joens confirmed this sentiment, saying that playing against another Catholic university would fire up her competitiveness.
Popes being drawn into sporting rivalries is nothing new. Leo X cheered from the sidelines as he watched his hometown calcio Fiorentino, a violent Renaissance ballgame, play in the Vatican’s Belvedere Courtyard in 1521. Saint John Paul II became an honorary member of German rivals Schalke and Borussia Dortmund, and Francis joked about divided loyalties before an Italy-Argentina soccer match in 2013.
Leo himself had barely been elected when Chicago baseball reached the Vatican: After his brother confirmed his White Sox allegiance, the American League Wild Card playoff team proclaimed, “HEY CHICAGO, HE’S A SOX FAN!”
Walsh said that the universities’ shared faith shapes how their athletes approach each other on the court. He said both Catholic and Augustinian spirituality encourage students to see their opponents “not as an enemy, but as someone who’s pushing them to raise their level.”
He described the deeper purpose of sports as the connections players discover with teammates, but also with God.
Leo, who plays sports and leads an active lifestyle, offered a similar sentiment in his February letter on sports, “Life in Abundance,” which described teamwork as a way of moving beyond one’s self-interest and toward a common goal. “Sporting competitions can also play an important role in fostering unity among people,” the pope wrote, adding that they provide an opportunity for teams to “strive together for excellence.”
“In the time before or after the competition, there is usually an opportunity to meet and get to know one another,” Leo wrote.