(LifeSiteNews) – The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro has called his meeting with Pope Leo XIV an “incredible” and “terrific” experience.

Shapiro attended the Pope’s weekly general audience this Wednesday, June 18, and was able to meet him as well. The conservative pundit gave the Pontiff both a letter asking for an interview and “a 2005 World Series White Sox baseball signed by the entire team,” he reported in The Daily Wire.

“I told him that while he is Catholic and I am Jewish, one of the miracles that we can agree on is the 2005 White Sox winning the World Series,” Shapiro added.

RELATED: Pope Leo XIV sends video message to fellow Americans at White Sox baseball stadium

The Pope seemed to enjoy the gift. “You could see him crack a bit of a smile as he received it. He was pretty delighted by it,” the pundit said.

It was an honor to meet His Holiness, @Pontifex in Vatican City today, and to thank him for standing up for Biblical values in a chaotic world…and to present him with a signed 2005 White Sox World Series baseball I had in my collection (we’re both fans). pic.twitter.com/hxlhUnKU7F

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) June 18, 2025

More seriously, Shapiro said he told the Pope that he had come “to pay honor to the fact that he was representative of biblical values in the world.” He wrote that the general audience itself was “an amazing event” attracting tens of thousands and “a reminder that godly, Biblical values are the guiding force for billions of people around the world.”

“The world seems like a very dark place from time to time, but the reality is that if you stick to eternal values, it does make the world seem like a brighter place.”

Shapiro recounted that there was a reading from the Gospel of John, about the healing of the paralyzed man by the Pools of Bethesda, and Pope Leo had given a talk on it, underscoring the agency involved in “Get up and walk.” The Daily Wire co-founder described the homily as follows:

At that moment when we feel stuck and trapped in a dead end, instead of allowing that to become an excuse for others to take care of us, we should not allow this to become a justification to avoid making decisions about our lives. Instead, we should get away from fatalism and embrace personal responsibility.

“It is these kinds of messages that are implicit in the Biblical narrative that the Pope is spreading, and that is a wonderful thing for our civilization,” Shapiro added.

While stressing that he is an Orthodox Jew, the pundit stated the “the Catholic Church remains a lodestone for Western civilization, a great spreader of Biblical values to humanity.”

He added that some Protestant churches do the same.

“People of God, people of the book, people of the Bible are spreading eternal values. It is worth acknowledging that and honoring that.”