Pope Leo Receives America's College Basketball at the Vatican

CBS News reported on Saturday that Pope Leo received the Villanova and Notre Dame basketball teams at the Vatican, ahead of a game in Rome that serves as the opening of the US college season. The fixture has been named the Eternal City Tip-Off, and according to the network it was created to honour the US-born pope.

The naming is the point. An American sporting occasion has been built around a pontiff who holds US citizenship, and the Vatican audience is the ceremonial centrepiece rather than an aside. The result is a small piece of transatlantic pageantry in which a university fixture acquires a diplomatic frame.

For Rome, the visit inserts an unfamiliar sport into a calendar dominated by football and by the Church. The capital hosts the Italian state, the Vatican and a heavy tourist trade; American college basketball is a niche on that list, but a fixture that brings travelling parties from two US universities puts a different kind of visitor on the city's streets for a few days.