内容摘要：People walk past the Beer Bar on the Bermondsey Beer Mile in south London, Saturday March 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Tony Hicks)

People walk past the Beer Bar on the Bermondsey Beer Mile in south London, Saturday March 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Tony Hicks)

Prevost graduated from Villanova with a Bachelor of Science in mathematics in 1977 and received an honorary Doctor of Humanities, honoris causa, from the university in 2014, Donohue said. Prevost also hosted Villanova officials in Rome that year. Donohue said the pope is a Villanova basketball fan. And Donohue has taken note that whenever he or the university send out messages, they can check who opens them, and the pope does every time.“Somebody sent me a text, one of the presidents from another one of the schools, said, ‘Three basketball championships and a pope. Do you people have to keep winning?’” Donohue said with a laugh. “It’s just different. It certainly has given us a lot of publicity.”

The Rev. Rob Hagan, known for long serving as Villanova’s athletics department chaplain, spent his second year of a spiritual training boot camp of sorts 27 years ago to become an Augustinian. It was in Racine, Wisconsin, a place where through his regional leadership position Prevost would visit newbies like Hagan. He is now the Prior Provincial at The Augustinian Province of St. Thomas of Villanova.“I saw him as kind of a mentor. You didn’t have to be in his presence very long before you understood how exceptionally bright he is,” Hagan said. “And yet, coupled with a real warmth and approachability.”Lydon, who lived with the pope in Peru, said he is an excellent singer, likes to cook and adopted Alianza Lima as his soccer team. Even when they both attended Villanova, the pope was a “model of what one would want in a future priest,” said Lydon, who is now stationed in Chicago.

“He was always a very bright person, but a humble person, one that you could easily talk to about anything, a person very devoted to his faith,” Lydon said.Kevin Hughes, a theology and religious studies professor at Villanova, said Thursday that he and several people who were in his office went silent when they heard the news because they couldn’t believe Prevost — an American — had been chosen.

Hughes described Prevost as a very gentle soul and somebody who knows how to connect with people.

“When you’re talking to him, he gives you his full attention,” he said. “I think he’s a very intelligent person. I think he’s very well read. But he’s never lost the pastoral touch.”Also appearing before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce were Jeffrey Armstrong of California Polytechnic State University and Robert Manuel of DePaul University. It was the latest in a

scrutinizing university presidents over their responses to allegations of anti-Jewish bias in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel and a wave of protests that swept the nation’s campuses.Unlike others that featured leaders of

and other elite institutions — with stumbles that later contributed to— this one intentionally focused on lesser-known schools. Republicans sought to look beyond the Ivy League to underscore the pervasiveness of antisemitism on U.S. campuses.