October 19, 2013 - A sporting event is taking place in the Vatican on Sunday, 20
October, to help focus on the educational, cultural and spiritual values associated
with sports. Some 5000 participants in the so-called “100 meter sprint for faith’,
which will be in the form of a relay race, will include families, seminaries and schools
along with numerous pilgrims. The initiative is being organized by the Vatican’s
Pontifical Council for Culture and the Italian Sports Center, as an event of the current
Year of Faith. The Pontifical Council for Culture explained that the continual
passing of the baton in the event, reminds of how Christian life is, in the image
described by St. Paul in his Letter to the Corinthians. It is a sort of ideal relay
race in which faith is transmitted from generation to generation, and in which the
Christian competes in order to win “an incorruptible crown”. Also, within the context
of the Year of Faith, it is intended to emphasize the importance of sport as a cultural
asset of education and spiritual value, and to draw the attention of different components
of the Catholic world to the formative role that sport may assume in Christian catechesis.
“Sport needs healing from its degenerations, so that it becomes again a meaningful
cultural phenomenon and reference point for the youth, making the most of the creative
spirit of the human person” said Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, President of the Council.
A variety of sports personalities will offer their witnesses, and at noon participants
will join Pope Francis in his weekly ‘Angelus’ prayer and blessing. Sunday’s sporting
event will be followed by a seminar on Monday on the theme, “Believers in the World
of Sports”. It will analyze the relationship between sport and faith, and will be
attended by heads of professional sports and Catholic sporting associations. The seminar
will focus on how sport can reveal man to himself, on the value of the human body,
with particular reference to disability, and on the value of sport in openness to
the absolute. (Source: Vatican)