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Hey everybody,
Today’s the feast of St. Thomas of Villanova, the Augustinian friar who was in the 1500s the Archbishop of Valencia, and who was a fiery preacher, an ecclesial reformer, and so committed to the margins of his diocese that he became known as the “father of the poor.”
If you’ve heard of him at all, you probably associate the saint most with his namesake university in Philadelphia, which means that until last year, you probably associated him with basketball, the most famous thing to come out of Villanova University before the election of Pope Leo XIV last year.
Would Thomas of Villanova have liked basketball? I don’t know. He didn’t like bullfighting, but bullfighting is different from basketball, because basketball players don’t get stabbed the entire game, and then roasted for public consumption immediately after a loss.
(Though in fairness, if the