Well, now we know why Pope Francis has been saying all that totally chill stuff about divorce and wealth redistribution: He’s been trying to get Matt Damon to come over and shoot some hoops. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Bishop of Rome and God’s holy representative on Earth has been compiling an ultra-exclusive guest list for a special summit/foam party at the Vatican this fall, with Damon, Oprah Winfrey, 24 and Arrested Development producer Brian Grazer, and David Geffen all reportedly on the pontiff’s short list. Also on that list is WME super-agent Ari Emanuel, who THR pointedly notes has yet to comment on whether he will accept the Pope’s invitation—presumably because he’s already going to live forever in the form of his fictional counterpart, Entourage’s Ari Gold.
The agenda of the meeting will be the Catholic Church’s depiction in Western popular media, which has been severely damaged by the glut of both sexual-abuse cases and shitty exorcism movies in which the church has been implicated in recent years. Francis is expected to sit his guests down in velvet beanbag chairs with gold tassels, pop open a couple of cave-aged Belgian Trappists, and initiate a rap session about how to make Catholicism cool again. “What if the Two Broke Girls took a vow of poverty?,” Pope Francis might ask, idly strumming on an unplugged electric guitar. “Or the Big Bang Theory guys built a time machine and went back to the crucifixion of Christ? Love that Sheldon,” the Pope, who is apparently a big fan of CBS sitcoms, might say. ”Popeapalooza 2016? What do you say, guys?”