As this year’s summer Olympic games open in Paris, the Vatican’s athletic department is calling for a cessation of all global conflicts and wars for the duration of the event and is urging participants to promote inclusion and fraternity.
In an open letter to Olympic athletes dated and published July 24, Athletica Vaticana, the Vatican’s official athletic association, noted that this year’s games are opening in the shadow of “wars, tensions and injustices – even with the lights off – on a global scale.”
“The proposal of the Olympic truce…and the participation in the race of the Refugee Team are two proposals of peace that all of us, a great sporting family, reiterate in a dark time of humanity,” they said.
In ancient times, the “Olympic Truce” originated as a means of allowing all athletes and spectators from Greek city-states to participate in the games safely, as they were continually engaged in conflict with one another.
In the 1990s the International Olympic Committee revived the concept of the Olympic Truce in a bid to protect the interests of both sport and the athletes participating, as well as a means of promoting sports as a way to facilitate peace, dialogue and reconciliation.
This year’s Olympic games are taking place in Paris and will last from July 26 – August 11, with the Paralympics lasting from Aug. 28 – Sep 8.
During his July 21 Sunday Angelus address, Pope Francis also called for truce for all global conflicts for the duration of the games, saying, “According to ancient tradition, may the Olympics be an opportunity to establish a truce in wars, demonstrating a sincere will for peace.”
“Sport also has a great social power, capable of peacefully uniting people from different cultures,” he said, and voiced hope that the games would be “a sign of the inclusive world we want to build and that the athletes.”
“[May] the athletes, with their sporting testimony, be messengers of peace and valuable models for the young,” he said.
In their letter, Athletica Vaticana noted that the athletes participating in the Olympics and Paralympics are men and women who cannot by themselves stop what Pope Francis has referred to as a “third world war in pieces.”
However, what the athletes can do is promote “the possibility of a more fraternal humanity. Through the language of sports dialogue, popular and understandable to all,” the letter said.
“In Paris, these days, everyone tries to embody the true values of sport: passion, inclusion, fraternity, team spirit, loyalty, redemption, commitment and sacrifice. Every training session, every challenge overcome, every moment of difficulty faced with courage, has brought you to the Olympic Games,” the letter said.
Athletes, it said, have trained and overcome countless challenges with the awareness that “sport is not only victory or defeat, sport is a journey through life that is never done alone.”
The letter recalled how Pope Francis has defined sport as a great “relay in the marathon of life with the baton passing from hand to hand, making sure that no one is left behind alone. Adjusting one’s pace to the pace of the last one.”
By setting the pace of the person farthest behind, sports, and the world, become more fraternal amid the difficulties, wars, poverty, injustices, tensions and fears of everyday life.
Through sports, athletes tell the story of redemption, hope, inclusion, the letter said, and in this spirit reiterated the call for the Olympic truce to be observed.
Athletica Vaticana recalled that in 2021, the International Olympic Committee added the word “together” to the official motto of the Olympics, “faster, higher, stronger,” making the motto, “Faster, higher, stronger – Together.”
“In Paris, then, the Olympics and Paralympics will be in the ‘together’ style,” the letter said, noting that Pope Francis has previously called “closeness” a key word for sports.
The association said this invitation to closeness from their “coach” Francis is one that ought to define this year’s games.
“Courage! No one is alone in the experience and gesture of sport: there is always a team, a family, a community,” the letter said.
Noting that many of the athletes have been dreaming of participating in the Olympics since they were children, having trained, planned, prepared and awaited it with great sacrifice and anticipation, Athletica Vaticana called the games “An opportunity not to waste, humanely or sportingly.”
“Even at the highest level of sport, yes also at the Olympics, it makes the difference to maintain the ‘amateur’ spirit of gratuitousness, that style of simplicity that puts a brake on the immoderate pursuit of money and success ‘at all costs,’” they said, cautioning athletes not to get lost in the money and fame that comes with the competition.
The mindset of gain, the letter said, risks “overwhelming everything in the name of profit, causing the loss of joy that attracts from an early age in the passion of sport.”
“With the beauty and loyalty of each person’s sporting gesture, and without ever resorting to shortcuts – a clean defeat is always better than a dirty victory – the Games can be opportunities of hope, in the small and large issues of each person and humanity,” the letter said.
It closed by insisting that the Olympics and Paralympics “can be strategies of peace and an antidote to the games of war. To win, together, the medal of brotherhood.”
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