How Ping-Pong and a $35K county trip helped a Miami-Dade commissioner meet the Pope

A Miami-Dade commissioner who works for a Catholic university went on a $35,000 county trip to the Vatican with a government aide to attend a conference tied to unplugging from digital devices and the value of neighborhood Ping-Pong festivals.

Read more How Ping-Pong and a $35K county trip helped a Miami-Dade commissioner meet the Pope

“Table tennis is the catalyst. Connection is the outcome,” reads the online program from the World UnPlugNPlay Day Conference, held June 3 and 4 in the Vatican. “Born from the Chicago Ping Pong Festival in 2000—where 300 tables were placed across the city and lines of people waited to play—this movement has grown for 25 years and now reaches the world’s most iconic cultural stage, proving that simple acts of play can bridge divides and restore our shared humanity.”

Commissioner Oliver Gilbert and Aiyanna Stiverne, a member of his District 1 staff, spent $27,000 to fly from Miami to Rome for the event, with expenses covered by the county. Lodging, meals and transportation brought the total cost to slightly more than $35,000, according to expense reports released to the Miami Herald through a request for public records.

Gilbert, who works for the president of St. Thomas University, a Catholic school in Miami Gardens, secured an audience with Pope Leo XIV as part of the conference — as did all attendees.

“How awesome is this?” St. Thomas University President David Armstrong said in a June 16 social media post about Gilbert’s unannounced county trip to the Vatican. Armstrong’s post included a photo of Gilbert with Pope Leo. “A truly special moment…”

In a statement Thursday afternoon, Gilbert, who serves as chair of the county’s International Trade Consortium, said he was invited to attend the conference and that it was designed to focus on the importance of human connection.

Gilbert, who represents the Miami Gardens area around Hard Rock Stadium, said he presented the Pope with a key to Miami-Dade County and a signed Miami Dolphins jersey “from the greatest Dolphin of all time, Dan Marino.”

The statement said he also handed the Pope a gift bag from St. Thomas, “a Catholic University with Augustinian roots; the Holy Father is from an Augustinian order.” The statement said the trip was not related to Gilbert’s position at St. Thomas.

Noting about 600,000 Catholics live in Miami-Dade, the statement added: “While Commissioner Gilbert is not Catholic, when given the opportunity to present the key to Miami-Dade County to the Vicar of Christ on earth in representation of the Residents of Miami-Dade County this office thought it was important” to attend.

County commissioners and Miami-Dade’s mayor travel abroad using taxpayer dollars, though the trips are not always announced to the public.

Gilbert’s social media accounts did not show him in the Vatican or meeting with the Pope, and there were no images showing Pope Leo with a key to Miami-Dade or holding a Miami Dolphins jersey.

But word did spread of Gilbert’s papal audience. When asked about it on June 7 by a Herald reporter, Gilbert confirmed his Vatican trip during an interview about the launch of his congressional campaign in the Democratic primary to succeed Rep. Frederica Wilson in District 24.

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“I told him that I wasn’t Catholic, but I was very proud of him,” Gilbert, who attends a Baptist church, told the Herald then. “It was an honor to meet him. It was an honor to represent the county there.”

He was one of 50 attendees at the UnplugNPlay conference, according to the event’s program. He and Stiverne flew business class, as allowed under Miami-Dade’s travel policies for flights over five hours.

The reports also list about $3,000 spent to have a van at their disposal from the morning to near midnight during both days of the conference. On July 15, a county accountant under the independent Office of the Clerk and Comptroller asked a County Commission administrator to “please advise if this was for several travelers and the reason this type of transportation was procured.”

Elda Green, director of the County Commission’s support staff, wrote back that Gilbert was sharing the transportation but did not say who else used the vans.

The event program, which is available online, appears to be the only public source of information about how the conference unfolded. Killerspin, the table tennis company out of Chicago that put on the event, canceled a planned interview with the Herald on Thursday and did not respond to a question about the conference.

The UnPlugNPlay program spans one-and-a-half days, with an hour dedicated to a keynote speech and panel discussion on “People Need People” and “Helping Those Who Need Our Love.” That included a call “for global cities to host their own UnPlugNPlay festivals.”

The June 3 program started at 8:15 am with a private audience with the Pope and the presentation of a Killerspin table-tennis table that the company designed for Pope Leo, a Chicago native, and had shipped to the Vatican.

After that was an 11:15 a.m. guided tour of the Vatican, its museums and gardens, followed by time for attendees to return to their hotels. At 5:30 p.m., the program had attendees reunite for the “From Movement to Action” keynote speech and panel discussion.

An hour later, the program listed cocktails on a Vatican patio followed by a gala dinner. The next day’s program started with a 10:30 a.m. tour of the Sistine Chapel before attendees departed the conference.

Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau staff writer Claire Heddles contributed to this report.

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This story was originally published July 24, 2026 at 3:36 PM.