Estimate Pope Leo’s hat size—tick!
Carry an Akubra hat, wedding clothes and shoes around Europe for weeks—tick!
Attend an audience with the pope and photograph him with the present—tick!
Sydney newlyweds James Lu and Fiona Choi did the lot, presenting Pope Leo XIV with an iconic Akubra hat while in Rome in August.
The couple joined an audience with the pope dressed in their wedding day attire as ‘sposi novelli’ and delighted everyone present when they gave him the Aussie staple.
“It was surreal, we weren’t sure if he was going to accept the gift,” he told The Catholic Weekly.
Lu said it “can’t get more Australian” than the hat they chose, which was made of kangaroo leather, fur felt, and had an opal embedded on the side of the hatband.
The couple had seen images of the pope receiving hats before, often baseball caps, and decided to take him an iconic hat all the way from Down Under.
Lu tried to figure out Pope Leo’s hat size by analysing photos of him and ended up guessing a little bit too small. He now reckons it is probably 58.
“Being the good sport that he is, he put it on and the entire audience hall went up in uproarious applause and cheering,” Lu said.
The couple woke up very early in the morning on 14 August to meet the pope and donned their full wedding outfits including their shoes.
“I think we were one of the few, if not the only, couple there that wore the exact same thing from top to tail,” Lu said.
“It felt nice, it was like getting married again.”
He said despite the pair being nervous about the meeting, Pope Leo made them “really feel at ease.”
“He was very gentle, he had a very kindly demeanour,” he said.
“He has made it a point that he tries to greet as many people as possible and to give all the newlyweds there the time that he did.”
