Villanova basketball’s trip to Rome is personal and professional for Rev. Rob Hagan

Rev. Rob Hagan was in Rome in September last year for a series of Augustinian meetings. The Order of Saint Augustine headquarters are a stone’s throw from Vatican City to the southeast, and Hagan, Villanova basketball’s team chaplain for more than two decades, and the 41st Prior Provincial at the Augustinian Province of St. Thomas of Villanova, was there on a business trip.

But an impromptu birthday party unfolded when Pope Leo XIV, who turned 70 on Sept. 14, 2025, showed up at the place he lived before he ascended to the highest position in the Catholic Church.

“We sang happy birthday and he blew out his birthday cake,” Hagan recalled this week.

“It was surreal because he was there as our brother, but certainly he’s there as pope. He had the papal garb on, but he’s still the man that we knew.”

» READ MORE: Twelve Villanova interns work in and around the Vatican. What’s it like to work with the pope?

Sometimes, Hagan said, he has to pinch himself. He sees himself in pictures with the pope, a 1977 graduate of Villanova, and has to correct himself.

“That’s not Bob anymore. That’s Pope Leo XIV,” said Hagan, a Drexel Hill native and 1987 Villanova graduate known simply as “Father Rob” around campus.

Hagan has been to Rome a few times since the former Bob Prevost was elected on May 8, 2025. He attended Pope Leo’s inauguration mass 10 days later and was back in the pope’s company for his birthday. He is likely to see him again this weekend, but this trip is different for Hagan.

Villanova is bringing its men’s and women’s basketball teams to Rome to open the 2026-27 college basketball season against Notre Dame. Thousands of Villanovans will be in attendance at the games and a celebration Saturday morning in Vatican City, where Archbishop Nelson J. Pérez will deliver a private mass before thousands pile into an audience hall for a scheduled audience with Pope Leo, who is back to making public appearances after undergoing surgery to treat lung cancer.

Hagan, who was a lawyer before joining the priesthood in 2003, has been to Rome, but this trip feels like a “culmination” and is both deeply personal and professional for him.

“This trip, clearly, is more than just a basketball game,” he said. “And so I’m blessed and excited to be a part of it.”

Hagan said the scope of St. Peter’s Square never gets lost on him. He’ll remember how moved he was to learn that Saint Peter is buried below the church. He’ll marvel at the plaza and the city’s architecture. He’ll light candles for people he promised to pray for. He’ll connect with the many Villanovans and Augustinians who will be around during the weekend. But he also knows that it’s a business trip, too.

“It’s not going to be all sightseeing,” Hagan said. “The season opens. We’re the first game of the NCAA season.”

» READ MORE: How Pope Leo has brought Villanova University closer to the Vatican

Hagan has been around the Wildcats since Jay Wright’s early days. Ryan Arcidiacono called Hagan the team’s “rock” in the lead-up to the 2016 national championship. Two coaches later, and in a much different college sports landscape, Hagan said like anything else, his role as team chaplain is a “challenge” these days, but it hasn’t necessarily changed.

“What I love about being a chaplain is you’re able to [be a] companion and walk them on that journey,” Hagan said. “Now what’s happening is the time you spend with them is much shorter.

“The goals should still not change, although your time with them is much shorter. We want them to grow in mind, body, and spirit.”

Hagan complimented Villanova coach Kevin Willard for recruiting the same kind of players and, perhaps more importantly, people that Villanova would have been recruiting in the past.

“Just because they’re getting paid, those other aspects don’t go away,” Hagan said.

This trip coinciding with the season starting is good timing. Hagan has often felt that road trips, where extending periods of time are spent together, are “wonderful opportunities” for team building and bonding.

“That’s where, sometimes, the magic happens,” he said.

The last year and a half has been sort of magical for Hagan and others at Villanova, which has grown closer to the Vatican than ever before.

“It’s really been a whirlwind since he stepped out on that balcony,” Hagan said.

» READ MORE: These Villanova priests have been friends with Pope Leo for decades. Now they are praying for him.

There are the obvious things like media requests, website traffic, and other forms of outreach, Hagan said, but also “renewed interest” in the church.

The Order of Christian Initiation of Adults (or OCIA) program at Villanova normally has a “handful” of students involved looking to join the church for the first time. This year, Hagan said, there are around 45 students. His parish in South Philadelphia, St. Paul’s, also has seen an uptick.

“We’re so proud of who Pope Leo XIV is and where he’s come from,” Hagan said. “He truly is one of our Augustinian brothers. He studied in the same library and ate in the same dining halls and walked the same path that I and so many of our students and Augustinian brothers have.”

Hagan has known the pope for quite some time. He was an Augustinian novice who spent a year of novitiate in Racine, Wis., in the late 1990s, when Prevost was assuming a new role: Prior Provincial of the Order of St. Augustine’s Province of Our Mother of Good Counsel, based in Chicago. That’s when their paths crossed for the first time.

They bonded over being Villanovans and Hagan’s path to the priesthood. Prevost has a canon law degree and wanted to learn about Hagan’s work in civil law and his work prior to entering the order. Over the years, they stayed in touch and spoke periodically, and Prevost would comment at times over the success of the Villanova basketball program.

“Like friends that we all have, life starts to get in the way,” Hagan said. “You had a job, he had a job. His job took him around the world.

“While I wasn’t seeing him in all those places ... you pick up right where you left off.”

Maybe that will happen again this weekend, when Hagan has a “full circle” kind of trip to Rome.

“I came to Villanova as a regular student, a Delco kid, out of high school,” Hagan said. “I went to Villanova because it was close to the trolley and I could get back and forth and work as a bartender at Bennigan’s.

“My whole life changed because of my time at Villanova.”