In February 1905, 9 years after the first fashionable Olympic video games had been held in Athens, their founder Pierre de Coubertin met at the Vatican with an enormous sports fan: St. Pius X.
Coubertin was searching for ethical and institutional help for the video games, which had been scheduled to be held subsequent in Rome in 1908 (however in the end diverted to London following Mount Vesuvius’ devastating 1906 eruption). Pope Pius had already revealed himself as a fan of sports and competitors, having as a parish priest organized video games of bocce — Italian garden bowling — for the males of his parish to divert their consideration from consuming and playing. As pope, he would additionally open two Vatican courtyards to be used for weekend gymnastic competitions from 1905 to 1908.
In his assembly with Coubertin, Pope Pius reportedly expressed his non-public help for the Olympics and athleticism on the whole. While the contents of Coubertin’s papal viewers are recognized to historians mainly via his letters, Pope Pius seized a possibility to publicly share his imaginative and prescient of sport simply months after their assembly. In October 1905, he addressed a gathering of youth gymnasts at the Vatican.
“The material exercises of the body will admirably influence the exercises of the spirit,” he instructed them.
Pope Pius’ recognition of the good of bodily play foreshadowed formal efforts now established in the Vatican to help athletics as a way of advantage and human excellence, on all ranges — from neighborhood kickball to the Olympics, together with this yr’s Milan-Cortina Winter Games, whose closing ceremony will likely be held Feb. 22.
Over the twentieth century, the Catholic Church continued to develop what some name a “theology of sport,” laying the basis for St. John Paul II’s creation of the “Church and Sport” part inside what’s now the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life. He additionally praised the good of sports in conferences with sports organizations, and was often known as an athlete in his personal proper.
As pope, Benedict XVI gave much less consideration to sports than his predecessor, however in 1978, as archbishop of Munich-Freising, Germany, he described sport as an exercise that hyperlinks humanity, and much more profoundly, one thing expressive of humankind’s want to prelapsarian freedom and bliss.
Under Pope Francis, a number of new Vatican-driven sports initiatives took form. Among them are the “Sport at the Service of Humanity,” which launched — with the assist of Thomas Bach, then-president of the International Olympic Committee, and Ban Ki-Moon, then secretary-general of the United Nations — after the Vatican hosted the inaugural world convention on religion and sport in 2016.
Since its founding, different regional Sport at the Service of Humanity conferences have been held at U.S. universities.
In June 2018, the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life issued “Giving the Best of Yourself,” a doc on the Christian perspective on sport and the human individual. The doc traced the historical past of the Church’s intersection with sports tradition, and it articulated why the Church has one thing to say on sports and athletics.
“The Church is interested in sport because the person is at her heart, the whole person, and she recognizes that sports activity affects the formation, relations and spirituality of a person,” it acknowledged, quoting from Pope Francis’ 2015 tackle to the Italian Tennis Federation.
Jesuit Father Patrick Kelly, a theologian who joined the school of Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, in 2025 after instructing at University of Detroit Mercy and Seattle University, was a key contributor to “Giving the Best of Yourself.” The creator of “Play, Sport and Spirit” (Paulist Press, 2023), he has devoted a lot of his educational work to the relationship between religion and sports.
“Sport is so human,” stated Father Kelly, who can be concerned with the Sport at the Service of Humanity initiative. His method to the theology and sport is grounded, he stated, in the understanding of the dignity of the human individual, conviction in the goodness of the materials world, and that the physique is “constitutive of what it means to be a human person.”
While some non secular heresies have centered on an individual extricating themselves from the bodily realm, Catholicism has built-in the physique totally into worship with pilgrimages, processions and the sacraments, Father Kelly instructed OSV News.
He pointed to St. Paul’s writings to the Corinthians wherein he in contrast the Chrisitan life to sports, one thing they already understood properly. Corinth sponsored the Isthmian Games, which had been held each two years to enhance the historic Olympics cycle.
“Do you not know that the runners in the stadium all run in the race, but only one wins the prize? Run so as to win,” he wrote. “Every athlete exercises discipline in every way. They do it to win a perishable crown, but we an imperishable one. Thus I do not run aimlessly; I do not fight as if I were shadowboxing. No, I drive my body and train it, for fear that, after having preached to others, I myself should be disqualified.”
St. Paul “references running a race in a stadium and uses athletic imagery,” Father Kelly stated. “They knew very well athletics, but they didn’t know Jesus, the Good News was new to them.”
Early Christians additionally drew from athletic imagery to explain the martyrs or monasticism, Father Kelly stated. St. Thomas Aquinas additionally addressed the connection between advantage and sport in the “Summa Theologiae,” and says sports are positively related to moderation.
“We play because we enjoy what we’re doing, but the enjoyment is, he (Thomas) says, directed to the good of the player,” he stated. “It’s the fullness of life — you’re more fully human.”
Theologian James Jay Carney, Father Kelly’s colleague at Jesuit-founded Creighton, stated that whereas many individuals join with sports of their life, sports’ objective and that means is typically ignored or unexplored. Carney and one other colleague developed a course on the matter, and he co-authored “On the Eighth Day: A Catholic Theology of Sport,” printed in 2022.
He stated {that a} theology of sports pertains to the Jesuit maxim of “finding God in all things.”
“Our experience of transcendence and meaning isn’t simply found in church. God’s present everywhere and always calling us, in a way, to our fullest kind of human experience,” Carney instructed OSV News. “It doesn’t mean sport is always that way, but it can be, with the right lens and the kind of reflective sense.”
The specialists instructed OSV News that exploring and incorporating the Church’s view of sports may have a constructive impression on how critical athletes may view their private price and dignity; how coaches may method their roles; and the place individuals and cultures place sports amid different obligations and priorities.
The Olympics notably underscore the better of sports — and generally additionally the worst, Carney stated. While the Olympics Games have concerned competitors scandals, poor sportsmanship, dishonest and nationwide tribalism, the Olympic Games additionally function a unifier inside and throughout international locations’ borders, and they spotlight what is feasible with onerous work, sacrifice and perseverance.
“At its best, it’s a great celebration of the human spirit, aspiration and what (Popes) Francis and Leo talk about in terms of ‘encounter’ across all these lines,” Carney stated.
As the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Games opened Feb. 6, Pope Leo XIV issued a letter on the worth of sport titled “Life in Abundance.” The letter underscored sport’s potential as an instrument of peace and an “ecclesial service.”
“(S)port can truly become a school of life, where all can learn that abundance does not come from victory at any cost, but from sharing, from respecting others, and from the joy of walking together,” he stated.
Sports additionally “offers valuable lessons that extend beyond the playing field,” continued Pope Leo, a tennis participant himself.
“It teaches us that we can strive for the highest level without denying our own fragility; that we can win without humiliating others; and that we can lose without being defeated as individuals,” he wrote. “Fair competition thus safeguards a deeply human and communal dimension. It does not divide, but brings people together; it does not focus solely on the result, but values the journey; it does not idolize performance, but recognizes the dignity of those who play.”
