There is a striking image: a Pope on skis, gliding down the snowy slopes of the Apennines while his security guard struggles to keep pace. This is no minor anecdote. It is a window into the soul of Karol Wojtyla and, by extension, into something broader: the conviction, sustained and developed by four pontiffs, that sport is a serious matter for faith. From John Paul II to Leo XIV, the Church has woven a coherent reflection on sport as a school of virtues, a space for encounter, and a path toward God. Not from the distance of an observer, but from the closeness of one who knows the field from the inside.
John Paul II: The Pope Who Was a Goalkeeper and Skier
Karol Wojtyla reached the pontificate with well-seasoned knees. As a young man, he was a football goalkeeper in Poland, practiced kayaking in the Carpathian rivers, hiked in the mountains, and never gave up skiing. As Pope, his collaborators confirmed that he made up to 115 skiing getaways in the Italian Apennines, often on Tuesdays, going incognito for hours.
But his connection to sport was not merely personal: it was theological. Saint John Paul II saw in physical exercise a reflection of the integral human condition. In his homily for the Jubilee of Sports People (April 12, 1984), he stated that “sport is the joy of life, a game, a celebration, and as such it must be valued […] by recovering its gratuity, its ability to strengthen bonds of friendship, to foster dialogue and openness toward one another, […] above the harsh laws of production and consumption.”
And in the Jubilee of the Holy Year 2000, before thousands of athletes gathered in Rome, he delivered perhaps his boldest image: Jesus is “the true athlete of God,” because he conquered the world not with force, but with the fidelity of love (Homily at the Mass for the Jubilee of Sports People, October 29, 2000).
For John Paul II, sport was also a pedagogical responsibility. To a group of ski instructors, he said: “You are ski instructors, but also teachers of life. Young generations will be especially grateful to you; in the current crisis of values, they need more than ever to learn not only technical skills, but convincing testimonies of an existence rich in meaning and illuminated by truth and love.”
It was he who, in 2004, institutionalized the Holy See’s commitment by creating the Church and Sport section within the Pontifical Council for the Laity.
Benedict XVI: The Intellectual Who Understood the Body
Benedict XVI: The Intellectual Who Understood the BodyJoseph Ratzinger was not a man of stadiums. His figure is associated with music, theology, and books. And yet, his pontificate left valuable pages on sport. In August 2009, he received a delegation from the World Swimming Championships being held in Rome at Castel Gandolfo. His speech was an act of genuine recognition:
“Sport, practiced with passion and a keen ethical sense, especially by youth, becomes a gymnasium of healthy competition and physical improvement, a school of formation in human and spiritual values, a privileged means of personal growth and contact with society.”
Benedict XVI appealed to the Psalmist’s wonder at the greatness of the human body—“you have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor” (Ps 8)—to emphasize that admiring sporting feats is, in a way, giving thanks to God for having given the body such perfection. He also recalled Saint Paul, who used sport as a metaphor for great ethical ideals: the race, the fight, the prize that does not perish. His message to athletes was simple and direct: “Be champions in sport and in life!”
Francis: The Fan Who Follows San Lorenzo
Jorge Mario Bergoglio inherited from his father a passion for San Lorenzo de Almagro, the Buenos Aires club founded by a Salesian in 1908. He was a member with the number 88,235. In the first days after his election in March 2013, when an Argentine journalist asked him for a blessing for the country, he responded spontaneously: “May San Lorenzo win.”
But Francis also knew how to take that popular passion to a deeper level. On August 13, 2013, in a meeting with the football delegations of Italy and Argentina, he told the players: “You are a reference for so many young people and a model of values embodied in life.” And he added, with an image that came from within him:
“I ask you to pray for me, so that I too, on the ‘field’ where God has placed me, can play an honest and courageous match for the good of us all.”
The Argentine Pope understood football as a universal language capable of reaching where words sometimes cannot. And he always warned against its perversions: violence in stadiums, doping, and the commercialization that destroys the spirit of the game.
During Francis’s pontificate, the Holy See took a decisive step in its institutional presence in the world of sport with the creation of Athletica Vaticana, the official Vatican multisport association, registered in 2018 and active since January 1, 2019. Entrusted to the Dicastery for Culture and Education, it coordinates various disciplines—such as athletics, cycling, tennis, padel, taekwondo, rowing, basketball, and swimming—and promotes sport as a space for fraternity, inclusion, solidarity, and peace. Its paralympic team, its projects with vulnerable people, and its initiatives like “We Run Together” or the “Padel Autistic Tour” reflect a vision very close to Francis: sport not only as competition, but as a language of encounter, Christian testimony, and care for the most fragile.
Leo XIV: Sport as a School of the Trinity
Robert Prevost, elected Pope on May 8, 2025, with the name Leo XIV, began his pontificate with the 2026 World Cup already on the horizon. On June 10, 2026, the eve of the tournament, he released a phrase that went around the world: “He who does not know how to pass the ball, even if he has talent, has not yet understood the game.”
But the most significant act was the Jubilee of Sport, held in Rome on June 14 and 15, 2025, within the framework of the Jubilee Year of Hope. Thousands of pilgrim athletes arrived at St. Peter’s Basilica. In his homily on June 15, Leo XIV connected sport and theology with a boldness reminiscent of John Paul II: “Sport can help us find God the Trinity: because it requires a movement from the self toward the other.” Drawing on Proverbs and the Church Fathers, he recalled that some ancient theologians spoke of a Deus ludens, a God who plays, who delights in creation as in a dance (perichoresis) of reciprocal love. And he diagnosed the ills of our age that sport can counteract: the loneliness of individualism, the disconnection of the digital world, and the illusion of invulnerability that cannot bear defeat.
“The athlete who never makes a mistake, who never loses, does not exist. Champions are not infallible machines, but men and women who, even when they fall, find the courage to get back up.”
Leo XIV also pointed to Pier Giorgio Frassati—Blessed, mountaineer, footballer, and patron of athletes—as a model of integration between faith and sport, announcing his canonization for September 7, 2025.
A Living Tradition
What unites these four Popes is not just a shared hobby. It is a common vision: the human body is not an obstacle to the spiritual, but its dwelling place. Sport, when practiced with gratuity, loyalty, and respect, does not lead away from God; it can bring one closer to Him.
The Church has not looked at sport with condescending distance. It has taken it seriously as an educational space, as a language of fraternity, and as a reflection—clumsy but real—of that dance of love which, according to the Christian faith, is at the origin of everything.
As Leo XIV said in St. Peter’s Basilica: the greatest victory is “that of eternity, the infinite field where the game will have no end and joy will be full.”
