From Villanova to the Vatican: Alma mater is floored it taught the FIRST US Pope

When Villanova University's president, Rev. Peter Donohue, was nearing graduation as a theatre student, a future pope wasn't far away on campus, studying math two grades below him.

- by Tassanee Vejpongsa and Jonathan Mattise

On Thursday, church bells rang out for hours in celebration at the Augustinian school near Philadelphia after the 1977 alumnus Cardinal Robert Prevost was elected the first pope from the United States in the history of the Catholic Church.

The school on the suburban Main Line near Philadelphia had reached the pinnacle of men's college basketball three times — winning championships in 1985, 2016, and 2018. But celebrating a pope in their ranks was literally unprecedented.

A billboard in Philadelphia showed the pope with a tagline: "From the Main Line to the Divine Line," and the hashtag #WildcatToShepherd. Internet memes turned the pope's Roman numeral V into Villanova's logo, and predictions piled up that the New York Knicks and its Villanova-laden lineup have a divine path to this year's title. Augustinian priests on campus are making rounds on the national TV circuit.

"We just all kind of lost it," said Villanova senior Peggy Murray, who met the world leader now known as His Holiness Pope Leo XIV, last year in Rome. "Just screaming and cheering and crying and having this knowledge that we met him. He was humble enough and cared enough about a group of gangly college students that he wanted to say Mass with us, and now this is the person who's our pope. I mean, it means the world."

Prevost has maintained his ties with Villanova over the decades