{"id":14462,"date":"2025-05-14T14:50:13","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T14:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/pope-leo-xiv-jannik-sinner-meets-newly-elected-pope\/"},"modified":"2025-05-14T14:50:13","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T14:50:13","slug":"pope-leo-xiv-jannik-sinner-meets-newly-elected-pope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/pope-leo-xiv-jannik-sinner-meets-newly-elected-pope\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope Leo XIV: Jannik Sinner meets newly elected Pope"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">World number one Jannik Sinner has met Pope Leo XIV in Rome.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 23-year-old, who has reached the quarter-finals of the Italian Open in his first tournament since serving a three-month doping ban, was invited by the Vatican to meet the newly elected leader of the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Italian was accompanied by his family and a delegation from the Italian Tennis Federation to meet the Pope, who is formerly known as US Cardinal Robert Prevost and a keen tennis player.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Sinner presented his racket to the Pope and asked if he would like to &#8220;play a bit&#8221; &#8211; but the 69-year-old looked up at the lights in the reception room and jokingly responded: &#8220;Better not.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In an interview in 2023, the Pope described himself as &#8220;quite the amateur tennis player&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Sinner will face Norway&#8217;s Casper Ruud in the last eight on Thursday at the Italian Open, which is taking place a short distance from the Vatican.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/tennis\/articles\/c2d5xy3r9nyo\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>World number one Jannik Sinner has met Pope Leo XIV in Rome. The 23-year-old, who has reached the quarter-finals of the Italian Open in his first tournament since serving a three-month doping ban, was invited by the Vatican to meet the newly elected leader of the Catholic Church. The Italian was accompanied by his family [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14463,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14462"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14464,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14462\/revisions\/14464"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}