On the main field of the Foro Italico, long before the meeting with journalists someone suggested a tennis match for charity, Pope Leo XIV had already come down, unconsciously evoked, In the banner of a child on the day of his debut by Jannik Sinner: “W the American Pope, W Italian tennis”.
And when at the end of the first meeting with the press in the Paul VI classroom in the Vatican, a journalist put in new Pope, to understand if he would be willing to organize a match of solidarity tennis for the pontifical missionary works, adding “I carry Agassi”, Pope Leone was found with the joke ready, revealing his competence on the subject: “It is enough that he does not bring Sinner!”. Playing the double sense linked to the fact that Sinner in English means “sinner”, he made it clear that perhaps he considers the number one in the world a little out of reach for the “Rather amateur tennis player”, who had confided to considering herself, in an interview granted Ricardo Morales Jiménez for the site of the Augustinian order, the day before being created cardinal in October 2023. Adding: “Since I left Peru I had few opportunities to practice, so I can’t wait to go back to the field.”
It runs rumor that, however, recently in Rome has played more often and it is said that he also did it on the last “normal” Sunday of his life, on May 4, before the conclave in which Cardinal entered and Pope came out. According to the testimony of Friar Andrés Felipe Romero to La Presse, the Cardinal Prevost played almost every Sunday with his secretary, priest of the Peruvian diocese of Chiclayo, in which he had been a missionary and bishop, but not on the “central” field of the Vatican allocated by the New York Times But on that of the Augustiniana patristic institute, a stone’s throw from the Vatican with a view of the Dome of San Pietro, Where Robert Francis Prevost was at home having been a prior general of the order of Sant’Agostino from 2001 to 2013, just outside the Leonine walls on the side of via Paolo VI.
The field indicated by New York Times Instead he is inside the walls, surrounded by protecting those who pass under the risk of being accompanied by a lob at the Viva the parish priest and also a bit because, as every Sunday tennis player knows, recovering balls beyond the balustrades is always an arduous undertaking. It is a field in red earth close to the interior walls in the north corner between via Leone IV and via Vaticano. If anything, the beneficial tournament should materialize, many vaticare that Pope Leo XIV could train there and in any case to have a small corner of freedom that the complicated life of a Pope is hardly gives.
However, it is known that there is a precedent of a practicing sports pope: John Paul II, as Pope, in blue suit and white cap gave himself a few Tuesdays on the skis and often went to take a swim in the Castelgandolfo swimming pool. He is the only sports pope not only in words, so far, even if the introduction to the volume The popes and sport Vatican publishing library, 2015, which collects the speeches of the popes on sport, reveals that Leo XIII – source an anonymous journalist from the early twentieth century -, before the pontificate, would have been an authentic sportsman as a young man: swimmer, “formidable runner”, mountain walker, hunter. All the others of sports have above all spoken, considering it an effective pastoral tool to transmit values of loyalty, Pope Francis also granting, first pope of history, an interview with the Gazzetta dello Sport, and trusting to a Dutch newspaper who in Buenos Aires: “Those who played football like me, called them ‘Pata tough’, who means having two synistic legs. But I was playing, I was a goalkeeper many times ». It is known that he checked for San Lorenzo but as a pope he has never seen the games because for decades he had voted not to watch TV. Pope Leone, on the other hand, is familiar with physical activity, so much so that he also moves from bishop for the rural areas of his parish in Peru riding for a long time.
The support of Leone XIV to the Chicago White Sox, one of the professional baseball teams of the Major League in the United States, also has been very concrete and certified: these days a video of the 2005 World Series Game has sprung up that fished the future pontiff in the stands at the stadium, cheering that the pope’s brother’s brother He confirmed.
Not for nothing At the first meeting with the media as Pope he made an autograph by writing Leo XIV on a baseball ball (photo Pull Aigav). And, in one of the first exits in white tale, greeting the crowd that had gathered along the road while returning by car from Santa Maria Maggiore, tightening a hand from the window shouted “Forza Roma”, confirming the rumors of his Giallorossi “faith”. While, meanwhile, the memes that pointed out an unsuspected physical resemblance between the new Pope and the coach of Rome and Claudio Ranieri had been wasted since the fellow. Father Pagano, prior of Santo Spirito in Florence, friend of Prevost since the times of the studies, After all, he had revealed to several media that he had heard him the last Sunday before the conclave that he joked us on football: “I told him that Rome’s victory against Fiorentina was the first miracle of Pope Francis.”
If in Tennis perhaps in that field reserved even by Pope he will be able to play sometimes, and we wish him, hardly from Leo XIV Robert Prevost will be able to return to indulge in another of the things that was gladly done as a cardinal: driving the car. But it is known that the president of Federtennis Binaghi has already tried at least to invite him to see the tournament, with what outcome it is not known. And there are already those who carry out to welcome him.
When, after the match of the round of 32, they report the pope’s joke of the world to the world who concerns him Sinner, as a shy boy who is a bit blushing: «Because you have to embarrass me … I learned that he has played and for us tennis players it is a good thing to have a pope like this sport. Dribble with him? In the future you will see …». And he has already been lucky that they did not report to the Pope of this banner with which the fans greeted his return to Rome.
