Newsroom (01/06/2025 08:08, Gaudium Press) On Tuesday, 27 May, Pope Leo XIV received the managers and players of the Napoli soccer club in the audience in the Vatican’s Clementine Hall. At the start of his speech, the Pontiff said that the press says he is a Roma supporter, but warned that “not everything you read in the press is true!”.
Reflection on winning a championship
He then congratulated the team on winning the Serie A championship. Reflecting on the victory, the Pontiff said that “winning a championship is a goal achieved at the end of a long journey”. “It’s the team that wins the championship,” he said, explaining that he was referring to ‘the players, the coach, and the whole team’.
The Holy Father highlighted this aspect of the team’s success, saying that it was the most important. “I would say that it is also a social aspect (…) that goes beyond the merely technical-sporting aspect, it is the example of a team – in a broader sense – that works together, in which individual talents are put at the service of the whole.”
Educational values of sport
The pontiff then addressed another aspect: education. “Unfortunately, when sport becomes a business, it runs the risk of losing the values that make it educational and can even become uneducational. We must be vigilant about this, especially when dealing with teenagers,” he warned.
Finally, he appealed to parents and sports leaders to pay attention to “the moral quality of the sporting experience in the competitive sphere, because the human growth of young people is at stake”. The Pope concluded the audience by thanking the team for their visit and congratulating them once again. “May the Lord bless all of you and your families,” he concluded. (EPC)
Compiled by Dominic Joseph
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