Two Popes and the Call for Sports
It's not all pray and no play at the Vatican
Who said young sports lovers can’t rise to spiritual loftiness?
Decades before he became Pope Francis (2013-25), young Jorge Mario Bergoglio was a kid growing up in Buenos Aires, Argentina, attending Sunday soccer matches with his father.
His life-long devotion to San Lorenzo de Almagro, one of Argentina’s top-tier clubs that curiously was founded by a priest in 1908, was never forgotten.
Upon Francis’ death, the team issued a statement, “His passion for San Lorenzo always moved us deeply, and unites us in constant prayer for his soul.”
On the other side of the world, one of Francis’ papal predecessors, Pope John Paull II (1978-05), was an avid soccer player in his native Poland.
Guarding the net, Karol Wojtyla was known as ‘Lolek the Goalie’, and he even played on a Jewish team when they couldn’t field enough players to take on Catholic squads.
Perhaps the most athletic of all pontiffs, John Paul was known to escape on skiing breaks during his papacy, and even built a swimming pool at Castel Gandolfo, the popes’ summer residence for the past 500 years.
Bridging the temporal with the spiritual, the two popes helped elevate sports as a noble pursuit in the Vatican’s agenda.
It was John Paul who set up a sports department at the Vatican in 2004 ahead of the Summer Olympics in Athens, in order to “reinvigorate the tradition of sport in the Christian community”.
His initiatives were soon aimed at countering the scandals around doping in cycling, match-fixing in the Italian premier league, and general fan violence at stadiums.
In 2007, the Vatican launched the Clericus Cup, a soccer tournament of teams representing seminaries around Rome.
Except during the covid period, the event has been held annually with 16 squads vying for the trophy - a ball sandwiched between a priest’s Cappello Romano hat and a pair of cleats.
In their inaugural match, the teams were reminded at kickoff- “You are playing in view of St. Peter’s Cupola, so behave well”.
With a twist to the standard rules, blue cards are handed out to offenders instead of yellow and red. The punishment received is five minutes on the sideline for reflection.
In 2018, under Francis’ tenure, the Vatican released a 52-page document on the subject of sports, referring to it as “…a very rich source of values and virtues that help us to become better people...”
Among the paper’s pronouncements was that sports can be enjoyed on Sunday as a way to celebrate family life and community, but not if it’s used to avoid Mass.
The report was the first of its kind and it followed a period of increased participation in athletics by the age-old institution.
Earlier that year, the IOC had also invited Vatican officials to take part with an observer status at one of their sessions preceding the PyeongChang Winter Olympics.
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In a letter to Cardinal Kevin Farrell, Prefect of the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life, Francis wrote:
“Sport is a privileged area around which people meet without any distinction of race, sex, religion, or ideology…We reach great results, in sports as in life, together, as a team!”
Shortly after, the Holy See created the Athletica Vaticana, an official sports association with a focus on fostering fraternity, solidarity, and positive values.
Comprised initially of 30 track & field athletes employed in the Vatican, they were dubbed the ‘pope’s runners’ as they pounded the pavement in the first ever ‘multireligious’ half-marathon, which started and ended near St. Peter’s Square.
On January 13, 2019, Vincenzo Pugio, a Sicilian priest, secured the faithful’s first sanctioned competition with a silver medal at the Messina Marathon. Naturally, he said a Hail Mary and blessed all runners at the starting lineup.
Two years later, Vatican Cycling became the first sports federation from Vatican City to gain official membership in a world governing body (UCI). Vatican Taekwondo (World Taekwondo) soon followed.
Historically, the Catholic Church has exhorted sports as a way to promote the virtues of Christianity, but it was now participating in physical disciplines, not just preaching them.
At first thought, self-glory and national honor, even if achieved on the sporting stage, seem at odds with religious teachings of harmony, humility and brotherly love.
But metaphors are different. St. Paul used game references to explain Christianity to gentiles and St. Thomas Aquinas saw virtue in sports, which were later incorporated into the programs of Jesuit education.
Then there’s the diplomatic front. In 2014, under the suggestion of John McCarthy, Australia’s ambassador to the Holy See, the papacy formed the Vatican Cricket Team.
One of the goals was to establish ties with countries and regions where the game is popular and the faith is different, such as India and Pakistan.
Not surprisingly, the Vatican City national soccer team is the most recognizable sports club associated with Rome’s spiritual enclave.
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Wearing yellow and white jerseys ghosted with an image of St. Peter’s Basilica, the team is comprised of religious employees from the police department, postal service, government agencies, and the Swiss Guard.
Though not part of FIFA, Vatican City has squared off in friendlies against European clubs such as Monaco and Borussia Monchengladbach. Their best performance was a draw against Monaco in April, 2017.
The team’s current coach is Gianfranco Guadagnoli, a former goalkeeper who also heads the Vatican’s women’s team.
The reason Guadagnoli got the coaching job? He never received a yellow or red card during his playing days.
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