Pope Leo XIV Tries Basketball Spinning Trick With Harlem Globetrotters

A basketball wobbled on the finger of a Chicago-born pope in the middle of St. Peter's Square on Wednesday, and the image told its own story about how Pope Leo XIV is constructing his public papacy.

During his weekly general audience, the Harlem Globetrotters visited the Vatican, demonstrated their signature ball-spinning routine and guided Leo XIV through an attempt at the trick himself. It was a made-for-video moment that played out in one of the world's most watched public squares, and it was not the first time. In May 2015, Globetrotter "Flight Time" Lang coaxed Pope Francis into spinning a basketball on his right index finger during a nearly identical scene at the same venue.

That continuity is part of what makes Wednesday's encounter notable for Vatican watchers. Leo XIV, born Robert Francis Prevost in Chicago in 1955 and elected on May 8, 2025 as the 267th pope and the first American ever to hold the office, is still early in a papacy defined by questions of outreach and identity. Welcoming the Globetrotters during a general audience, a ceremony broadcast globally and attended by thousands, sends a signal about the kind of accessibility his office intends to project.

The Globetrotters, founded in 1926 by Abe Saperstein and now self-described "Ambassadors of Goodwill" who have performed across 122 countries and territories on six continents, have cultivated this Vatican relationship across decades. Wednesday's visit represents at least the ninth papal audience in the team's history. Pope John Paul II was named the 7th honorary Globetrotter in 2000, receiving a jersey numbered 75 to mark the team's 75th anniversary in a ceremony attended by 50,000 people in St. Peter's Square. Pope Francis was named the 9th honorary member on May 6, 2015, presented with a number 90 jersey ahead of the team's 90th anniversary tour, with Hi-Lite Bruton, Ant Atkinson, Big Easy Lofton and Flight Time Lang all in attendance.

For Leo XIV specifically, the optics carry an added layer of national resonance. As the first American pope, a dual U.S.-Peruvian citizen who spent years as a missionary in Peru before serving as prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, he occupies a position no predecessor has held: a figure with genuine cultural fluency in both the United States and Latin America. The Harlem Globetrotters, whose name invokes a New York neighborhood recognized worldwide, arrive as an unmistakably American institution with a global footprint that mirrors his own biography.

Whether Wednesday's encounter signals a deliberate strategy to court younger audiences and American Catholics, or simply a continuation of the Globetrotters' long-running Vatican tradition, the optics were striking: the first American pope, less than a year into his tenure, attempting a basketball spin trick before the cameras of the world, in a square where his predecessor did the same thing a decade ago. The Globetrotters were scheduled to perform in Rome at the PalaTiziano the following day, giving the Vatican visit a rare dual function as both spiritual diplomacy and advance promotion for a show down the road.

For a papacy still shaping its public face, it was the kind of unscripted warmth that no press office can manufacture and no basketball trick can quite replicate on its own.