{"id":160431,"date":"2025-06-26T16:50:18","date_gmt":"2025-06-26T16:50:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/160431\/"},"modified":"2025-06-26T16:50:18","modified_gmt":"2025-06-26T16:50:18","slug":"pope-leo-xiv-blesses-commanders-rival-ahead-of-2025-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/160431\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope Leo XIV Blesses Commanders Rival Ahead Of 2025 Season"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pope Leo XIV Blesses Commanders Rival Ahead Of 2025 Season<\/a> originally appeared on Athlon Sports<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last year in the playoffs, the Detroit Lions needed all the help they could get against the upstart Washington Commanders, who buzz-sawed coach Dan Campbell’s favored team in a 45-31 shellacking.<\/p>\n

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The Lions are coming back into 2025 with some extra juice, though, as they figure to once again join Washington as a Super Bowl contender.<\/p>\n

The Lions have The Vatican on their side.<\/p>\n

Pope Leo XIV – seriously – has blessed an NFL player ahead of the 2025 regular season.<\/p>\n

And really … playfully … Washington fans shouldn’t be as upset about this as Chicago Bears fans surely are.<\/p>\n

The first-ever American pope just happens to be from Chicago … and has long been well-known for his fandom of the Bears and the White Sox and all things Windy City.<\/p>\n

As it happens,\u00a0Detroit Lions tight end Sam LaPorta and his new bride, Callahan Dellinger LaPorta, scheduled a vacation in Rome …<\/p>\n

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And yes, they got blessed by the Pope, as the young NFL tight end demonstrated for all to see as took to Instagram to show off the photo on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

“Thank you to a very busy man for blessing me and my bride. A special moment we\u2019ll never forget,” he wrote.<\/p>\n

Bears fans can be mock-unhappy about this … but\u00a0Chicago has spent a great deal of time in the NFC North basement and doesn’t figure to be a match for the powerful Lions anyway.<\/p>\n

And the Commanders? As they and the Lions prepare to give chase to upsetting defending champion Philadelphia toward a Super Bowl run, they’ll take any “blessing” they can get.<\/p>\n

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Perhaps Dan Quinn should book himself a quick trip to The Vatican?<\/p>\n

Related: Commanders Trade Terry McLaurin for T.J. Watt in Blockbuster Prediction<\/a><\/p>\n

Related: What is Commanders’ Biggest ‘Red Flag’ In 2025?<\/a><\/p>\n

This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports<\/a> on Jun 26, 2025, where it first appeared.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pope Leo XIV Blesses Commanders Rival Ahead Of 2025 Season originally appeared on Athlon Sports. Last year in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2071],"tags":[391,6214,146,113,2506,7,147,6,242,13426,7472,4378,111],"class_list":{"0":"post-160431","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-detroit-lions","8":"tag-chicago-bears","9":"tag-dan-campbell","10":"tag-detroit","11":"tag-detroit-lions","12":"tag-detroitlions","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-lions","15":"tag-nfl","16":"tag-philadelphia","17":"tag-pope-leo-xiv","18":"tag-sam-laporta","19":"tag-the-lions","20":"tag-washington-commanders"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114750699949574202","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}