New pope gives Villanova University another reason to cheer

By Karen Freifeld

VILLANOVA, Pennsylvania (Reuters) - At midweek, the chaplain of Villanova University's basketball team cheered as one of his former star players led the New York Knicks to a come-from-behind National Basketball Association playoff win.

The next day, Father Robert Hagan was celebrating another Villanova graduate he knows - the pope.

"We're just cheering another one of our teammates, you know?" Hagan said on Friday as students packed up for the semester.

Leo XIV was known as Robert Prevost when he was a math major at the Catholic university in the 1970s, walking its bright green lawns and studying and praying in its gray stone Gothic buildings.

Hagan, a former senior associate athletic director at the university, also is prior provincial, the leader of Augustinian friars at Villanova. Leo, who once led the world's Augustinians as prior general, is the first pope from that order.

Hagan said the pope, whom he has known for 27 years, has the spirit of St. Augustine of Hippo, a North African bishop of the fourth and fifth century. "And what I mean by that is veritas, unitas, caritas would be the core values," he said, referring to the Augustinian university's Latin motto that translates as "truth, unity and love."

The pope's intelligence, compassion, capacity for language, and ability to immerse himself in different cultures would help him in his mission, Hagan added. "He has a certain ability to relate and connect with people that I think the world is going to really appreciate," he said.

Students and faculty alike are savoring the moment.

Classmates at a watch party at St. Rita's Hall, a building at the heart of campus named for a 15th-century Augustinian nun, eyed white smoke rising from the Sistine Chapel. Other students were taking a final exam in engineering when their professor announced the news on Thursday. Evening mass in the campus's iconic St. Thomas of Villanova Church became a celebration.

Patty Rutter, 63, went into the library at the Inn at Villanova near campus on Thursday after she heard the news.

Yearbooks dating to 1943 line the room in the inn's lobby.

Rutter found the 1977 edition and paged through to a portrait of a serious-looking Prevost.

"There is no halo," joked Rutter, who works at the inn and is a Villanova student.

The yearbook was soon removed from the library and placed in a safe, front desk clerk Kay Shockley said on Friday. It had suddenly become more valuable.

Aleko Zeppos, 21, the newly elected student body president, said it had been an incredible week for Villanovans.

"Now our most notable alumni is not an NBA player," he said.

The 183-year-old Catholic university has 10,000 undergraduate, graduate and law students. Its academic reputation is strong, but it is most recognized outside its Philadelphia suburb for basketball.

"We've been known for being the NCAA champs at three different times," said Father Kevin DePrinzio, Villanova's vice president for mission and ministry. "And we also have a pope now. That's a whole different level of wow."

DePrinzio had emailed the future pope on Tuesday, telling him he was praying for him as cardinals worked to choose a successor to Francis, who had led the Church since 2013.

DePrinzio, who started that email with "Dear Bob," said he got an immediate and friendly response.

On Friday, he was planning an email offering "prayerful support." 

"I will lead with 'Your holiness,' and wait for him to say, 'You can call me Bob.'"

"If that happens," he said, "I might just pass out."

(Reporting by Karen Freifeld; editing by Donna Bryson and Richard Chang)