Villanova Carries Papal Ties Into Rome Basketball Opener Against Notre Dame
Villanova's men's and women's basketball teams will open the 2025-26 season in Rome on Sunday, Nov. 1, facing Notre Dame in a doubleheader billed as the Eternal City Tip-Off, held roughly six miles from the Vatican. The event carries special weight for Villanova, whose most famous alumnus, Pope Leo XIV, graduated from the school with a mathematics degree in 1977 and remains a member of the Augustinian order that founded the university in 1842.
The men's game airs on FOX and FOX One at 9:30 a.m. ET, with the women's game following at noon ET. University president the Rev. Peter Donohue said Villanova's profile has grown internationally since Leo's election. "We certainly have a bigger footprint there now than we used to," he said. "People do know who we are, just because it's the pope's school." The trip follows a Villanova-hosted sustainability conference in Rome, where the university awarded a cardinal its inaugural Pope Leo XIV Sustainability Medal. bet surfing
Villanova is the only American university that counts a pope among its graduates, a distinction arriving alongside a period of athletic success: the men's program has won NCAA championships in 1985, 2016 and 2018, and three Villanova alumni helped the New York Knicks win this year's NBA title. Donohue said the school saw applications rise more than 10% during the first admissions cycle following Leo's election in 2025, a trend he called "the Pope Leo effect." The Rev. Bernie Scianna, Villanova's vice president for mission and ministry and a longtime friend of the pope, said interest in Catholicism on campus has also increased, with 56 people currently enrolled in the university's program for prospective converts, compared with fewer than 10 in a typical year.
Organizers expect roughly 6,000 Villanova fans and 1,000 Notre Dame fans to travel to Rome for the weekend. Pope Leo, who has continued limited public appearances following a recent cancer diagnosis and surgery, is scheduled to hold a private audience for both traveling fan bases inside the Vatican on Saturday, health permitting, while Philadelphia Archbishop Nelson Perez will celebrate a private Mass for the group in St. Peter's Basilica. The trip also includes academic and cultural programming, including a panel on sports and spirituality featuring Ed Hastings, a member of Villanova's 1971 national runner-up team who now teaches at the university.
