(20 May 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Rome – 20 May 2025
1. People training at Omega gym
2. Feet on treadmill and fresco of a church’s dome
3. Various of Valerio Masella, a gym trainer from Rome, who used to personally train Pope Leo XIV when he was still a cardinal, talking to Omega gym’s customers
4. SOUNDBITE (Italian) Valerio Masella, Pope Leo XIV’s trainer at Omega gym:
++SOUNDBITE PARTIALLY COVERED++
“The first day, there are charts with exercises, with speeds and slopes to be done, and I started with the ones indexed clearly for a man of his age. However, for him it was just like he didn’t even feel the work. When we were supposed to get to a substantial level of perceived fatigue that was almost a warm-up for him. Let’s say it was a little bit ineffective on him and so I directly adapted the program by making it a little bit harder."
5. SOUNDBITE (Italian) Francesco Tamburlani, owner of Omega gym:
++SOUNDBITE PARTIALLY COVERED++
“When the name of the pope, the name of the pope was announced my phone rings and my son tells me ‘Dad it’s Robert. But Robert who? Our member’. I heard behind him the staff of the gym joyfully cheering. Because he is a member of our gym, this moved us, filled us with joy. We were happy to have him in our gym as a member.”
6. SOUNDBITE (Italian) Valerio Masella, Pope Leo XIV’s trainer at Omega gym:
++SOUNDBITE PARTIALLY COVERED++
"In general, I always heard words of appreciation for everything from him. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him make a comment about anything that wasn’t positive. He always had positive words for everything, for the weather, for the city, for the people, but, also in my regard, he said he felt good, good in the gym. But everything around him in general even regarding the other members of the gym, he always said positive things about everything.”
7. People working out
8. Exterior of Omega gym
STORYLINE:
Valerio Masella used to meet Robert Prevost, now known as Pope Leo XIV, twice a week for an hour-long training session at the Omega gym.
“For him the training chart suited for his age was just a warm-up,” said Valerio Masella, the gym trainer who took care of Pope Leo XIV, when he was still a little-known American cardinal who had arrived in Rome from Peru.
Masella, a professional gym trainer, was reluctant to define what age the Pope’s training program corresponded to, but he estimated that Prevost “did work typically assigned to a 50-55 year old man.”
The Omega gym is a small but well-equipped gym much frequented by nuns, priests, monsignors and employees of the Vatican, but also by the fashionable people of the bourgeois Prati district.
Pope Francis brought Robert Prevost, 69, to the Vatican from Peru in 2023 to serve as the powerful head of the office that vets bishop nominations from around the world, one of the most important jobs in the Catholic Church.
It comes as Pope Leo XIV vowed on Sunday to work for unity in a polarized Catholic Church and world, as history’s first American pope offered a message of healing during an inaugural Mass in St. Peter’s Square before an estimated 200,000 pilgrims, presidents, patriarchs and princes.
Leo officially opened his pontificate by taking his first popemobile tour through the piazza, a rite of passage that has become synonymous with the papacy’s global reach and mediatic draw.
The 69-year-old Augustinian missionary smiled and waved from the back of the truck to people waving U.S., Peruvian and other national flags, and stopped to bless some babies in the crowd.
AP Video shot by Silvia Stellacci
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