It looks like Pope Francis will be taking his world-changing ways to the sports arena.
According to the Sports Business Journal, Francis will make sports a key focus of his third global initiative on education, beginning with a multi-faith conference in October at the Vatican called “Sports at the Service of Humanity.”
The Vatican will focus on three educational areas to help people grow: school, sports and jobs. The inclusion of sports represents the first time such a high-profile global institution has focused on the topic as a driver of social change. It also marks the first time that the Vatican has marshalled its wide reach on such a topic.
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The event will be an invitation-only conference for around 150 of the world’s sports, government and religious leaders. The event will be held in the Vatican from Oct. 5-7. Formal invitations will be sent out by this summer.
“There has never been such a meeting at the highest level of the Vatican on sports and faith,” said Monsignor Melchor Sánchez de Toca Alameda, the Vatican’s Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Culture. “It is not a one-off event. The idea is to create a movement that brings in all religions and all countries.”
We love to talk in America about how sports can improve us and our society, teach us valuable life lessons and so on, and apparently, the Pope is buying in. Sports do seem particularly valuable in uniting people across religious, ethnic or national lines. Someone from South Korea and someone from Ghana may not know a thing about each other or their respective cultures, but they both know the rules of soccer, which can be pretty powerful.
Pope Francis himself is a well-known soccer fan and specifically a supporter of Buenos Aires-based San Lorenzo de Almagro. According to the Sports Business Journal, he first had the idea to use sports as a vehicle for social change shortly after his election in 2013.
The “Sports at the Service of Humanity” conference will be held from October 5-7.