The China Mail - Tennis, Twitter and marinated fish: Things to know about Pope Leo

But, in the half-day since the Vatican unveiled the Catholic Church's first leader from the United States, notable facts have begun to emerge about the new pontiff.

- Red Robes and White Sox -

The new pontiff is a fan of the Chicago White Sox baseball team, whose supporters are now celebrating a spiritual victory against their city rivals the Chicago Cubs.

The Cubs tried to grab first base early, posting a message on their Wrigley Field stadium claiming: "HEY CHICAGO, HE'S A CUBS FAN!"

But the Sox scored a home run when Pope Leo's brother John Prevost told local broadcaster WGN: "He was always a Sox fan."

Leo XIV is also reportedly a fan of the Alianza Lima football XI, the Peruvian capital's soccer team, currently standing fifth in the Liga 1 table.

Leo is also a tennis player. According to Italian daily La Gazzetta dello Sport, citing "those who know him", the pope has an "excellent backhand and is a formidable competitor".

In an interview on the website of his Augustinian order to mark his elevation to cardinal, he said: "I consider myself quite the amateur tennis player. Since leaving Peru I have had few occasions to practise so I am looking forward to getting back on the court."

- Church groundsman -

When not pounding cross-court drives across the turf, Prevost might be tending it.

As a maths student at Philadelphia's Villanova University he also worked as a gardener at a local church.

"While he was in college, he had a little side job as a groundskeeper for one of our parish cemeteries," the city's Archbishop Nelson J. Perez told AFP, grinning.

"Amazing story, right? So the pope worked here."

- The goats and the fishes -

Pope Leo, an Augustinian missionary, found his calling working among the poor and marginalised in Peru, where he obtained nationality in 2015.

And he wasn't just attracted to the Andean country for its football teams.

"He loved goat, duck with rice and ceviche, those were his favourite dishes," the bishop of Chiclayo, Leo's former diocese, Edison Farfan told reporters.

In recent years, Peru has become a foodie destination, and dishes like ceviche -- fish marinated in citrus and served cold, often with onions -- have gone global.

But, according to Farfan and others, Prevost's mission was focused on aid to those living in poverty on the periphery of society.

- Keyboard cardinal -

Pope Leo is not the first pontiff to post -- Benedict XVI used the handle @Pontifex in 2012 -- but he is the first to have a long social media history for friends and foes to pore over.

Despite US President Donald Trump hailing Prevost's elevation as an honour for the United States, far-right trolls on Elon Musk's X were quick to denounce him as, among other things, a "WOKE MARXIST POPE".

Prevost's timeline on X suggests the new pope may be on a collision course with Trump's White House over its hardline anti-immigrant policies.

He has pushed back against Vice President JD Vance's nativism, notably his argument that Christians should love their family, neighbours, community and fellow citizens -- in that order.

On February 3, three months before being elected pope, he reposted an article headlined: "JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others".

In 14 years since his X account was created, he has posted more than 400 times on a range of hot-button issues: racism, sexual abuse by the clergy, Covid-19 and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

He has also amplified criticism of Trump's anti-immigration policies, reposting a 2017 article which called refugee bans "a dark hour of US history".

- Speaks fluent 'espanol' -

In March, Trump designated English as the official language of the United States.

Two months later, the first pope to hail from the United States addressed the Vatican crowd in Italian, Latin and ... Spanish, the language of his beloved Peru.

The surprised crowd -- many of whose members had travelled from Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America to see who would replace Pope Francis, an Argentine -- erupted in cheers.

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T.Luo--ThChM