Vatican to issue guidelines for cultural approaches to sports

(June 08, 2012) On the occasion of important sporting events such as the European Football Championships 2012 kicking off on Friday and the London Olympic Games in July, the Vatican’s Pontifical Councils for Culture and for the Laity will next week present new guidelines for cultural approaches to sports. In a statement on Friday, the Pontifical Council for Culture said the guidelines which will be released on June 14, will seek to identify in sports a privileged ‘place’ for dialogue between the Church, culture and the world of youth, and a new platform of encounter between believers and ‘non-believers’. “Today sports is in need of an invasion by a new humanism that gives fullness to the meaning of life of sportsmen and fans, preventing them from a commercialism that always conditions them by imposing on them consumerist lifestyles and models,” the statement said. The June 14^th event will also be an occasion to present a new department of the Pontifical Council for Culture dedicated to culture and sports, which will work in close collaboration with the already working “Church and Sport” section of the Pontifical Council for the Laity and the John Paul II Foundation for sports.