We Reach Out to the Pope and Hope for a Response: Part 1
Last year, fans of The New Orleans’ Saints football team, and the team itself, were surprised and delighted when it looked like Pope Francis—yes, The Pope—tweeted in support of the football team on Sunday, October 13:
In reality, it was an accident. When the Pope put the hashtag (#) in front of the word Saints, it automatically generated the football team’s fleur-de-lis logo. The Pope was actually referring to five new saints who were recently canonized. But when the team beat The Jacksonville (Florida) Jaguars 13-2 later in the day, the humor continued when The New Orleans Saints thanked The Pope:
With the Adult Education Center having been based in New Orleans, we couldn’t resist jumping in to the party when it came to our beloved home team. And one of our most treasured members of the school’s original faculty jumped in with us: Sharon Rodi.
Sharon was Adult Education Center director Alice Geoffray’s right-hand person when it came to starting the school, and she was pivotal every step of the way until its closing. Today, she continues to be one of our most valuable supporters and champions.
Our plan was to send Pope Francis a New Orleans Saints T-shirt and let him know how much we appreciated his spiritual support, however accidental, for our team. With Sharon’s help we connected to The Archbishop of New Orleans, Reverend Gregory M. Aymond. The Archbishop graciously sent our letter and an official Saints T-shirt to the Pope. It was a thrill to see a copy of his letter addressed to the “Personal Secretary of Pope Francis.” Meanwhile, our cousin, Pam Randazza, who owns the Black and Gold Sports Shop located in Metairie, Louisiana, right outside New Orleans, was “all in” when called upon to help out. She and her shop donated the Saints T-shirt sent to Pope.
We weren’t sure if the Pope knew about the history of the Saints, so just in case, we filled him in: The team, we wrote in our letter, “was founded in 1967 as the city’s first major professional sports franchise. The naming of the team was important to the entire community. The owners at the time wanted to honor New Orleans’ centuries long Catholic heritage. They asked Archbishop Philip Hannan for permission to do so. The Archbishop granted permission and even wrote a ‘Prayer for the Saints’ in 1968, which continues to this day to be THE prayer of our Saints.”
We also told the Pope how the team and the Catholic Church helped hold New Orleans together after Hurricane Katrina.
Finally, we told Pope Francis about The 431 Exchange and our determination to continue the legacy of the little secretarial school called the Adult Education Center whose graduates broke down color barriers. At our recent reunion, we wrote, a graduate from the class of 1972 said the school helped her "exchange a life of poverty for a life of prosperity." And if there was a secret to the school’s success, we said, it was that it reinforced its students’ belief in God and themselves.
Pope Francis is well known for his commitment to equality and women’s rights. He just named an Italian lawyer to be the first woman to hold a management position in the Vatican’s highest office, the Secretariat of State. We are crossing our fingers that he receives our Saints T-shirt and reads about The 431 Exchange. Maybe he’ll even tweet about it! For us, that would be an answered prayer.