This month, Pope Leo XIV is inviting us to join him in prayer for the values of sports. His official prayer text and accompanying video will be available tomorrow here.
While many popes have spoken about the physical and spiritual value of sports in the past, Pope Leo is particularly athletic. In addition to his well-known enjoyment of baseball and the Chicago White Sox, he is said to play tennis and regularly swims.
In February, he used the occasion of the Winter Olympics to offer an address on the benefits and potential pitfalls of sports. In it, he emphasized the role that sports can play in promoting fraternity and peace through encounter and friendship. He also spoke of the role that sports play in human flourishing and in living in a way that is balanced. Sports, he said help us to respect the physical aspect of human life, form cultures, honor boundaries and limitations, develop teamworking skills, and incorporate the “ethic of play” in an often serious and endlessly driven world.
He cautioned, however, that when profit and business models drive sports, the benefits of these activities are undermined, resulting in exploitation and self-focus. In some cases, this can lead to the use of performance enhancing drugs, gambling, fanaticism, propaganda, and other forms of dishonesty and corruption. Pope Leo noted that, “Such dishonesty not only corrupts sporting activities themselves, but also demoralizes the general public and undermines the positive contribution of sport to society as a whole.”
When engaged properly, sports can overcome these potential errors and help participants and fans to understand many experiences in human life. For example, Pope Leo wrote that one of the valuable aspects of athletics is that “Learning to accept defeat without despair and to welcome victory without arrogance enables athletes to face reality in a mature way, recognizing their own limits and possibilities.” Additionally, he said that “Recovering the authentic value of sport therefore means restoring its incarnational, educational and relational dimension, so that it can continue to be a school of humanity and not simply a device for consumers.”
Because of the potential value of sports, Pope Leo noted that they can play a significant role in the way that the Church accompanies, forms, and educates its people. It can also be a force for unity within the Church and individual parishes. As such, it should be readily available to all.
Finally, Pope Leo said that sports offer an opportunity to live abundantly and to “learn that abundance does not come from victory at any cost, but from sharing, from respecting others and from the joy of working together.”
Image: “BT Paralympic World Cup 2009 Athletics:” (CC BY 2.0) by Stuart Grout
Ariane Sroubek is a writer, school psychologist and mother to two children here on earth. Prior to converting to Catholicism, she completed undergraduate studies in Bible and Theology at Gordon College in Wenham, MA. She then went on to obtain her doctorate in School and Child Clinical Psychology. Ariane’s writing is inspired by her faith, daily life experiences and education. She is currently writing a women's fiction novel and a middle-grade mystery series. Her non-fiction book, Raising Sunshine: A Guide to Parenting Through the Aftermath of Infant Death is available on Amazon. More of her work can be found at https://mysustaininggrace.com.
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