The Villanova and Notre Dame males’s and ladies’s basketball teams can be taking a Roman vacation next season.
In a nod to the election of Pope Leo XIV, the first American Pope and a Villanova graduate, the two Catholic universities will formally announce in the present day a doubleheader to be performed in Rome on November 1, a supply tells NCS Sports.
The males’s sport can be performed at 9:30 a.m. ET and aired on Fox, and the ladies’s sport will tip off at midday ET on FS1. The website of the video games has but to be finalized.
The two colleges have been speaking about the historic occasion for months, as a approach to have fun each their Catholic missions and Pope Leo XIV. The Wildcats and Fighting Irish teams are anticipated to take pleasure in an viewers with the Pope in advance of the video games in addition to have fun a shared Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica.
A local of Chicago, Pope Leo, then often known as Robert Prevost, graduated from Villanova in 1977 with a level in arithmetic.
He joined the Order of Saint Augustine – Villanova and Merrimack are the solely two Augustinian universities in the US – earlier than embarking on missionary work in Peru.
Upon Pope Leo’s election in May 2025, Villanova college students and college flocked to the on-campus chapel as the church bells rang out throughout the Philadelphia campus.
The historic occasion even introduced numerous the monks on campus out to reminisce on their very own private tales about their connections with the man they as soon as knew as “Bob.’’
Now, “Bob” can be welcoming his Wildcats and the Irish to his new neighborhood.