A Chicago family made sure Pope Leo XIV got a taste of home when they visited Rome, giving him a special \u201cDa Pope\u201d Bears t-shirt.<\/p>\n
In fact, those very shirts may have convinced the pontiff to visit with the Munoz family during his official duties in Rome, as they were all wearing the shirts during the meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just shows how loving and down to Earth and approachable our pope is,\u201d Ann Munoz said.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, the Munoz family was visiting Italy when they took a rideshare vehicle from approximately 45 minutes outside of the Vatican to attend the pope\u2019s mass. They were outside the church, and they planned to all wear the \u201cDa Pope\u201d t-shirts, adorned in Bears\u2019 colors and stylized after the legendary \u201cSuperfans\u201d sketches from Saturday Night Live, to pay tribute to Pope Leo\u2019s connections to Chicago.<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tChicago Bears fans presented Pope Leo XIV with shirts that read “Da Pope,” while visiting Rome.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
They also made sure they had one extra, just in case they were able to cross paths with the pontiff.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2019Why don\u2019t I just buy one more on the off chance that maybe, wishful thinking -maybe we could get it to the pope somehow,\u2019\u201d Ann Munoz recalled.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you (search for) the pope on Amazon, there\u2019s tons of versions of everything,\u201d Marcel Munoz added. \u201cSo when we were deciding on which one to pick, I was like, \u2018I don\u2019t know if we\u2019re going to be like 100 meters away,\u2019 so we\u2019re just like \u2018let\u2019s get simple DA POPE (shirts) as big as possible.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The couple\u2019s three children were also in Rome, and all five were wearing the shirts when the magical moment occurred.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was across from us, and he turned his head an i think we caught his eye with our shirts and our son Rocco was just like waving the extra shirt in front of the barricade,\u201d Ann Munoz said. \u201cAnd he made a beeline straight for us. And I was like \u2018oh my goodness, he\u2019s coming!\u2019\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0Needless to say, the encounter left the Munoz family starstruck.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen came to me, I couldn\u2019t even form sentences,\u201d Marcel Munoz said. \u201cI was like \u2018Chicago, we love you pope, we love you.\u2019 I said go Bears!\u201d<\/p>\n
The viral moment was caught on video and even made the pope\u2019s official Instagram page, and it\u2019s one the Munoz family will never forget.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really did feel very special in that moment. \u00a0You feel that connection,\u201d Ann Munoz said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Chicago family made sure Pope Leo XIV got a taste of home when they visited Rome, giving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232333,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2070],"tags":[374,692,391,2493,7,6,13426],"class_list":{"0":"post-232332","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-bears","8":"tag-bears","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-chicago-bears","11":"tag-chicagobears","12":"tag-football","13":"tag-nfl","14":"tag-pope-leo-xiv"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114908273615926927","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232332","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=232332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}