Pope makes baseball fans proud by catching doll thrown from crowd
The Catholic Herald• May 29, 2025
Pope Leo XIV has demonstrated his US roots as an ardent White Sox baseball fan after making a one-handed catch of a cloth doll thrown at him while on the move in the popemobile.
The impressive demonstration of hand-to-eye coordination, which has caused a stir on social media, occurred as the Pope departed on the popemobile after the weekly general audience at St Peter’s Square in the Vatican on 28 May.
The cloth doll appeared to be dressed in a way that represented the vestments the Pope wore when he first appeared on the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica after being declared as Pope Leo XIV.
Following the Pope’s election on 8 May, as the news sunk in at his baseball-mad hometown of Chicago, there was much speculation as to which baseball team the new Pope supported.
The rivalry between the Chicago White Sox and the Chicago Cubs – typically viewed as the underdogs – is one of the longest and keenest felt in US baseball history.
Pope Leo XIV’s brother, John Prevost, told local television station WGN that the pontiff was “always a Sox fan”.
“He was never, ever a Cubs fan. So I don’t know where that came from. He was always a Sox fan,” John Prevost said.
This was followed by a clip doing the rounds on social media that showed the future Pope cheering on the White Sox at Game 1 of the 2005 World Series.
The good-natured incident after the weekly general audience may still have caused the Pope’s security team some concern, before the flying object was established to be a cloth doll.
And there will likely be others who will nevertheless question both the etiquette and potential risks of randomly throwing items at the Pope.
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Photo: Pope Leo XIV tries to catch a cloth doll thrown at him as he leaves on the popemobile after the weekly general audience at St Peter’s Square in the Vatican, 28 May 2025. (Photo by ANDREAS SOLARO/AFP via Getty Images.)