Pope Leo XIV Keeps Up Tennis, Riding and Exercise Routine Weeks After Lung Surgery

Pope Leo XIV spent the early part of his trip to Argentina addressing large crowds and young people. Report 1 says he celebrated a Mass at the esplanade of the Military Aviation School in Córdoba before 800,000 people. Report 2 cites a Vatican estimate of 650,000 for the same Mass. Both reports describe a Mass in Buenos Aires the following Monday, but they differ on the size. Report 1 says more than 2 million people attended at the Monument of the Spaniards, while Report 2 estimates 2.5 million attended the main Mass in Buenos Aires, which it calls a record for his still-young pontificate.

Report 2 says that on Tuesday night an estimated 1 million people attended a youth vigil at the Monumento de los Españoles in Buenos Aires. Report 1 had said earlier that the pope was scheduled to take part in a vigil with young people in Buenos Aires City. In that vigil, Report 2 says, Leo urged Argentines to reject the idols of money, drugs and pornography and to model their lives on the saints. He listed temptations including success at any cost, money, drugs, porn and an obsession with appearances, popularity or pleasure. He told young people, “Do not bow down before anything that cannot give you life,” and “if you have ever fallen, get back up.”

Report 2 also says that after the Córdoba Mass, Leo met privately with 20 people chosen by the archbishop. Among them was Alba Camargo, whose father, stepmother, aunt and uncle disappeared during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship. Relatives of the disappeared sought out the pope in the same way that the archbishop’s guests were chosen, and the meeting offered a moment of consolation to those who had lost family members, a sign of the comfort the faith describes for the grieving (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).

Report 1 separately profiles the pope’s personal habits. It says Leo XIV, now 71, practiced baseball and football as a child and cycled the streets of his neighborhood with his brothers. During his religious mission in Peru, he played football matches with priests and seminarians. As a cardinal, he played tennis at the General Curia of the Order of St. Augustine in Rome. Shortly after his election, he received Italian tennis player Jannik Sinner at the Vatican, where he joked that playing was not better there because everything was broken.

Report 1 also cites his former coach, Valerio Masella, who said he supervised the pope’s training for almost two years, two or three times a week, in a gymnasium adjacent to the Vatican. The reports do not say whether the pope has continued this routine since his election, though Report 1 says the article covers habits he “maintains in the Vatican.”

Human rights groups estimate that around 30,000 people were killed or disappeared under the 1976-1983 military dictatorship in Argentina.