Sunday’s Times also carried a long article about the new pope, which included a few paragraphs about his years at Villanova. “He majored in math and attended Masses that were sometimes interrupted by shouts of ‘Hoagie Man!’ when a guy selling subs passed by.”
The Hoagie Man was an institution at Villanova, at least in the ’70s. You’d be studying in your dorm room, dinner a distant and unpleasant memory, and suddenly you’d hear the welcome cry of “Hoagie Man!” followed by the Pavlovian sound of a box full of hoagies – Italian, roast beef, ham & cheese – being dragged down the terrazzo floor in the hall. The day Pope Leo was elected I texted a former classmate, wondering if the papal apartment would now be getting nightly visits from the Hoagie Man. But I never thought of the Hoagie Man as a disrupter of Masses. He announced his presence upon entering a dorm, late in the evening, far from church.
