VATICAN CITY -- The Incredible Hulk fulfilled a childhood dream by meeting with Pope Leo XIV on Wednesday. Lou Ferrigno, who starred as the Marvel character during its 1977--1982 U.S. television run, met with the American pope and chatted briefly with him at the end of Leo’s general audience in St. Peter’s Square. “I’m here because it’s a lifelong dream for me to meet the pope,” Ferrigno told reporters. Noting that one side of his family hails from the southern Amalfi region, Ferrigno said that he grew up hearing about the pope in a Catholic Italian family and served as an altar boy. “I’m very, very honoured to be here to see Pope Leo, because it’s my whole life, it’s a dream coming true,” he said. He posed for photographers, mimicking the gesture that made him famous in his onscreen transformation from Bruce Banner into the superhero Hulk -- flexing his arm muscles. Ferrigno, a retired professional bodybuilder, starred as Hulk in the CBS series before going on to other television and film roles. He noted that some had been filmed in Rome, and that he appreciated the pope’s message. “Our world, our country needs someone like him: A great leader about kindness and peace, because there’s so much turmoil happening in this world,” he said. It’s unknown if the former Robert Prevost was a Hulk fan. By 1977, when the series began, the Chicago-born pope was graduating from Villanova University and entering the Augustinian religious order as a novitiate. Recently, Leo has acknowledged he and his family were regular watchers of a different television personality: the newly-beatified Archbishop Fulton Sheen, the popular American TV and radio preacher. ___ The Associated Press Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
