Did the Pope Really Wear Nikes?
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May 13, 2026This post was originally published on this site
Eagle-eyed viewers spotted a swoosh in Vatican City.
For a few hours Pope Leo XIV had sneakerheads stumped.
Near the end of last week, the Vatican released a trailer for “Leone a Roma,” a breezy-looking documentary on the American-born pope’s years in Rome. It’s not something that would normally grab the attention of those who don’t closely track the goings on at the Holy See.
Yet, at about 50 seconds, we get a glimpse of the pope in an off-white robe with a pair of white sneakers on his feet. A black swoosh peeks out from under his vestments. The pope, folks, was wearing Nikes. (The pope hails from the land where Michael Jordan reigned. If he was going to wear any sneaker, it was going to be a Nike.)
Lay websites, more used to covering the latest colorway of Crocs, gave a spotlight to the swooshed pope. “The devil wears Prada, the Pope wears Nike,” reads a top comment on a Complex Sneakers Instagram post of the Nike-wearing pope. That post has more than 44,000 likes.
It is not clear when the pope purchased the sneakers. The image in the trailer is undated, and it appears to predate his tenure as pope.
The shoes, which do look like something a younger Robert Prevost might have worn to mow the lawn, were curiously hard to identify.
