ROME — When in Rome, head to the corner of the Via Leone IV and the Viale Vaticano and turn west for about 50 yards along the latter, to where the line for entry to the Vatican Museum starts to build.
Crane your neck up to the top of the 39-foot-high Vatican City wall, and there it is — one of the few things besides trees and buildings that peek above the fortifications to be visible from street level.
A high, netted fence juts above the wall, stretching a few meters across. It would not deter anyone who had just overcome 12 meters of vertical brickwork, but it is not there to protect the Pope, the Cardinals, the Swiss Guard and Vatican staff. It is there for the benefit of the people walking below: to stop a bad shank, an over-enthusiastic lob or a spiked smash sending a tennis ball plummeting to earth and onto the heads of passing pedestrians.
That fence encircles the campo centrale of the Catholic church: the Vatican City tennis court — now under the dominion of Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, or rather Pope Leo XIV. After white smoke billowed from the chimney atop the Sistine Chapel on May 8, the new leader of the Roman Catholic church was beamed onto the stadia at Rome’s Foro Italico, where the crowds at the Italian Open turned their attention from the tennis to cheer.
Then the questions rolled in.
Can Pope Leo XIV unite the progressive and conservative wings of the church and its 1.3 billion souls? Can the first pontiff from the United States manage the baggage that comes with hailing from the Western superpower?
And does this guy need tickets for the Italian Open finals next weekend, just shy of two miles north of his new domain?
To the extent that he had much of a reputation outside of those in the know at the Vatican and his coterie of longtime friends in Chicago and at Villanova University, Penn., Pope Leo XIV had already told the world that tennis is his sport.
“I consider myself quite the amateur tennis player,” the future Pope Leo said in an interview with the website of the Augustinian Order in 2023, when his predecessor, Pope Francis, gave him his red Cardinal’s hat on his arrival in Rome. (No, not the St. Louis Cardinals. When it comes to baseball, Pope Leo is a Chicago White Sox fan, meaning temperance and perseverance in adversity are in his wheelhouse.)
“Since leaving Peru (where he worked for the previous nine years), I have had few occasions to practice, so I am looking forward to getting back on the court,” he said.
At first, he appeared to have said that he was a Carlos Alcaraz fan, which might have perturbed the local denizens of his new home given Jannik Sinner’s standing as Italy’s sporting pontiff. They need not worry: the claim was fake.
Unknown to some longtime close Vatican watchers, devout Catholics, and even several of the higher-ups at Italy’s tennis federation, the FITP, there has long been what satellite images show is a lovely red court, tucked into the northern corner of the Vatican City.
A security worker on duty outside the museum the morning of May 8 said most people don’t know about it because it’s not easy to find. People either know it’s there, across the road from the building that surrounds the Cortile Ottagono courtyard, or they don’t. The gardens and area around the tennis court have been closed to the public since April 28 for the conclave to choose a new Pope. Having a hit was not high on the Cardinals’ priority list.
A tennis court may not figure highly in Vatican City apocrypha, but what information it has preserved paints a portrait of what was once a lively tennis scene, with Cardinals competing in a tournament that also included members of the Swiss Guard and was eventually opened up to Vatican employees and their children.
On May 9, a spokesperson for the Swiss Guard, Cpl. Cinotti Eliah, wrote that as far as he knew, none of the guards now play tennis, which may be both good and bad news for Pope Leo. It could create an easier path to victory in any tournament he might organize, though perhaps it will be a little harder to find a quality young partner to join him in a last-minute hit.
Any laity who faced the Pope on court would face several moral dilemmas. Is it cool to hit a winner past him if he comes to the net? Tagging the leader of the Holy See during a net duel also sounds like a one-way ticket to excommunication.
Messages that included questions about the tennis court sent to the communications office of the Holy See were not returned.
The golden era of Vatican tennis was the late 1970s, after the court was renovated. Even the Cardinals got caught up in that first tennis boom of the modern era, according to archival research from the Pontifical Council for the Laity.
A “Tournament of Friendship” began in 1978. Giovanni Battista Re, who would become the Vice-Dean of the College of Cardinals, took the title. At the time, he was a priest who worked for the Secretariat of State, which performs the political and diplomatic functions for the Pope.
In the final, Battista Re topped Roberto Tucci, an Italian Jesuit and the director general of Vatican Radio. He became a Cardinal, too. There was a third-place match. Peter Hasler, a Swiss Guard, beat Faustino Sainz Munoz of Spain, who became an archbishop.
Priestly tennis benevolence proved their undoing. They stopped winning when they opened up the tournament to the employees of the Holy See’s Property Administration, and then children of employees — a bad idea for older guys interested in winning championships. Eventually, participation waned and the tournament ended, before Vatican Museum employees started it again in 2008.
Pope Leo won’t have to work hard to find support among the sport’s current pros if he wants to make tennis a bigger part of his reign.
Iga Świątek said in a news conference that she would love to spend some time in St. Peter’s Square waiting for the white smoke to emerge from the Sistine Chapel if she could work it out in her schedule. Emma Raducanu predicted a long conclave Wednesday night, a call which did not age well — Pope Leo was elected after a little more than 24 hours.
Madison Keys said Thursday night that her good friend Desirae Krawczyk, a doubles player, had hustled down to St. Peter’s Square to join the excitement.
All of it has made this opening week one that the Italian Open will never forget, especially come the announcement of his election appearing on stadium screens during matches Thursday evening.
Turns out that was fitting. All these years later, Robert Francis Prevost finally made it in pro tennis.
(Top photos: Andrej Isakovic, Alberto Pizzoli / Getty Images; Illustration: Will Tullos / The Athletic; Graphic: John Bradford / The Athletic)
