Notre Dame and Villanova hoops teams set to visit the Pope in Rome next season

By Dana O’Neil, CNN

(CNN) — The Villanova and Notre Dame men’s and women’s basketball teams will be taking a Roman holiday 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 officially announce today a doubleheader to be played in Rome on November 1, a source tells CNN Sports.

The men’s game will be played at 9:30 a.m. ET and aired on Fox, and the women’s game will tip off at noon ET on FS1. The site of the games has yet to be finalized.

The two schools have been talking about the historic event for months, as a way to celebrate both their Catholic missions and Pope Leo XIV. The Wildcats and Fighting Irish teams are expected to enjoy an audience with the Pope in advance of the games as well as celebrate a shared Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica.

A native of Chicago, Pope Leo, then known as Robert Prevost, graduated from Villanova in 1977 with a degree in mathematics.

He joined the Order of Saint Augustine – Villanova and Merrimack are the only two Augustinian universities in the US – before embarking on missionary work in Peru.

Upon Pope Leo’s election in May 2025, Villanova students and faculty flocked to the on-campus chapel as the church bells rang out across the Philadelphia campus.

The historic event even brought a number of the priests on campus out to reminisce on their own personal stories about their connections with the man they once knew as “Bob.’’

Now, “Bob” will be welcoming his Wildcats and the Irish to his new neighborhood.

The-CNN-Wire
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