Why Tom Brady and Garth Brooks will be at the Vatican this weekend

Courtney Mares   By Courtney Mares for CNA

May 7, 2024 Catholic News Agency News Briefs 3 Print

 

Singer-songwriter Garth Brooks (left), former NFL quarterback Tom Brady (right), and other celebrity guests will meet Pope Francis in an audience at Apostolic Palace on May 11, 2024, as participants in the Vatican’s World Meeting on Human Fraternity. / Credit: SUZANNE CORDEIRO/AFP via Getty Images; Daniel Ibañez/CNA; TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images

Rome Newsroom, May 7, 2024 / 12:30 pm (CNA).

Garth Brooks may have friends in low places, but this Saturday he will perform at a high-level Vatican event with Nobel Peace Prize winners, business leaders, and professional athletes, including former NFL quarterback Tom Brady.

Brady, Brooks, and other celebrity guests will meet Pope Francis in an audience at the Apostolic Palace on the morning of May 11 as participants in the Vatican’s World Meeting on Human Fraternity.

It will be the second time that the longtime quarterback for the New England Patriots has met a pope. Brady met John Paul II in 2004 after winning the Super Bowl.

Brady will speak at a Vatican roundtable on sports titled “Competing in Mutual Esteem” on Saturday at 4 p.m. at the Italian National Olympic Committee’s Hall of Honor.

It is one of 12 roundtables organized throughout Rome at the second annual World Meeting on Human Fraternity — called #BeHuman — on topics ranging from education to peace-building, with economist Jeffrey Sachs and New York Mayor Eric Adams among its speakers.

On Saturday night, Brooks will sing some of his country hits in St. Peter’s Square starting at 9:30 p.m. as the culminating concert of the two-day human fraternity event organized by the Fratelli Tutti Foundation.

When asked why Brooks was chosen to perform at the Vatican, Father Francesco Occhetta, the secretary general for the Fratelli Tutti Foundation organizing the event, told CNA that the foundation has built relationships in the United States, adding: “We did not have a lot of time to invite more artists.”

Last year, Grammy winner Andrea Bocelli performed at the World Meeting on Human Fraternity during which Pope Francis signed a document drafted by a dozen Nobel Peace Prize winners together with representatives of former Nobel Prize-winning organizations calling for a commitment to human fraternity.

Nobel Prize winners will return to the Vatican this year for a roundtable on peace on Friday, May 10. Cardinal Pietro Parolin will give the opening speech for the roundtable, which will include Russian journalist Dmitrji Muratov, American human rights activist Jody Williams, Yemeni activist Tawakkol Karman, Filipino journalist Maria Ressa, Liberian pacifist Leymah Gbowee, Guatemalan activist Rigoberta Menchù Tum, and Bangladeshi economist and banker Muhammad Yunus.

Other participants in the peace roundtable include the former prime minister of Niger, Ibrahim Mayaki, and Graça Machel Mandela, the widow of the late Nelson Mandela.

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Pope Francis to visit graves of two 20th century Italian priests

April 24, 2017 CNA Daily News 0

Vatican City, Apr 24, 2017 / 11:28 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis will make a pilgrimage June 20 to visit the graves of two 20th century Italian priests in the towns of Bozzolo and Bariana, the Vatican announced Monday.

Fr. Lorenzo Milani and Fr. Primo Mazzolari both have reputations for being anti-establishment, though they were obedient to the Church throughout their lives. The Pope’s visit to their graves will take place in a “private and unofficial manner,” the April 24 communique stated.

The pilgrimage takes place in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the death of Fr. Milani, who lived from 1923-1967. Pope Francis spoke about Fr. Milani in a video message to the participants of a presentation on the priest’s complete works in Milan Sunday.

“I would love to remember him especially as a believer, in love with the Church even though he was wounded,” the Pope said in the message April 23, “and as a passionate educator with a vision of the school that seems to me to respond to the need of the hearts and the intelligence of our children and youth.”

Pope Francis’ brief visit – only half a day – will begin with an early morning helicopter flight to Bozzolo June 20, landing at 9:00 a.m. He will be welcomed by the Mayor of Bozzolo and the Bishop of Cremona, Antonio Napolioni.

From there the Pope will proceed to the parish of St. Peter to pray at the tomb of Fr. Primo Mazzolari, after which he will give a commemorative speech to the faithful present at the church.

At 10:30 a.m. he will leave for Barbiana, arriving at the Barbiana church at 11:15 a.m. He will be welcomed there by Cardinal Giuseppe Betori, Archbishop of Florence and the Mayor of Vicchio, a municipality of Florence.

He will then visit privately the cemetery of the church to pray at the grave of Fr. Lorenzo Milani. Afterwards, Pope Francis will meet in the church with still-living disciples of Fr. Milani.

After a short visit to the rectory in the adjacent garden he will give a speech in the presence of around 200 people, including the disciples, priests of the diocese and some children living in family homes in the area. The Pope will return to the Vatican by about 1:15 p.m.

Fr. Milani came from a wealthy but secular family, the son of an atheist father and a Jewish mother. He studied art, which had a profound influence on his conversion to Catholicism and eventual entrance into the priesthood in 1947.

His “frankness that sometimes seemed too rough when not marked by rebellion” carried over even into his priesthood, Pope Francis noted in his video message. This led to some friction and misunderstandings with ecclesiastical and civil structures “because of his educational proposal, his preference for the poor, and defense of conscientious objection.”

Despite this, however, he was always deeply obedient to the Church and to her directives. He once wrote: “I will never oppose the Church because I need (her) several times a week for the forgiveness of my sins, and I would not know to whom else to go to look for it if I had left the Church.”

Fr. Primo Mazzolari lived from 1890-1959. He grew up in a small neighborhood of the town of Cremona, Italy, entering the seminary in 1902. Some have called him a “priest of the embankment,” because he grew up on the banks of the Po River and also at the “embankment” of the Church.

Very politically active, he intervened in the First World War and after, and was so anti-fascist he refused to sing the “Te Deum” after a failed attack on Mussolini by Tito Zaniboni in 1925.

His greatness already recognized, he was invited to the Vatican by both Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI before his death. In 2015 permission was formally granted to open the diocesan phase of Fr. Mazzolari’s cause for beatification.
 
Andrea Gagliarducci contributed to this report.

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3 Comments

  2. Is Pope Francis aware that Mr Brady is divorced and has a significant other
    ? I am curious what the prerequisites were for attending such roundtables

    Reply

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