No. 1 player Jannik Sinner gives Pope Leo XIV racket on Italian Open off day : NPR

VATICAN CITY — Pope Leo XIV has made peace with Jannik Sinner.

The highest-ranked tennis participant visited the brand new pope on Wednesday, gave him a tennis racket and supplied to play, throughout an off day for Sinner on the Italian Open.

Leo, the primary American pope, is an avid tennis participant and fan and had mentioned earlier this week that he could be up for a charity match when it was instructed by a journalist.

However on the time, Leo joked “we will not invite Sinner,” an obvious reference to the English that means of Sinner’s final title.

By Wednesday, all appeared forgotten.

“It is an honor,” Sinner mentioned in Italian as he and his mother and father arrived in a reception room of the Vatican’s auditorium. Holding one among his rackets and giving Leo one other and a ball, the three-time Grand Slam champion instructed a fast volley. However the pope seemed round on the antiques and mentioned, “Higher not.”

Leo, a 69-year-old from Chicago, then appeared to joke about his white cassock and its appropriateness for Wimbledon, maybe a reference to the All England Membership’s all-white clothes rule.

He requested how the Italian Open was going. “Now I am within the sport,” Sinner mentioned. “Initially of the event, it was a bit troublesome.”

Sinner has a quarterfinal match on Thursday in his first event again after a three-month ban for doping that was judged to be an unintentional contamination.

He’ll subsequent face freshly topped Madrid champion Casper Ruud. Sinner is trying to grow to be the primary Italian man to win the Rome title since Adriano Panatta in 1976.

Throughout the viewers, Angelo Binaghi, the top of the Italian Tennis and Padel Federation, gave Leo an honorary federation card.

“All of us felt the fervour that Leo XIV has for our sport and this crammed us with satisfaction,” Binaghi mentioned in an announcement. “We hope to embrace the Holy Father once more quickly, possibly on a tennis court docket.”

The pope and Sinner posed for images in entrance of the Davis Cup trophy that Sinner helped Italy win for the second consecutive time final yr. Additionally on show within the room was the Billie Jean King Cup trophy received by Italy in 2024, the largest girls’s workforce occasion in tennis.

Earlier within the week, after Leo’s first quip about not wanting to ask him, Sinner mentioned it was “a great factor for us tennis gamers” that the brand new pope likes to play the game.

Along with tennis, Leo is an avid Chicago White Sox baseball fan.

His predecessor, Pope Francis, was a lifelong fan of Buenos Aires soccer membership San Lorenzo.