At midday today, in the Holy See Press Office, Via della Conciliazione 54, a press conference was held to present the Jubilee of Sport, to take place on 14 and 15 June 2025.

The speakers were: His Eminence Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education; Novella Calligaris, former swimmer and journalist; Amelio Castro Grueso, Paralymic athlete; and Giampaolo Mattei, president of Athletica Vaticana.

The following are the interventions of His Eminence Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, Amelio Castro Grueso and Giampaolo Mattei:

Intervention of His Eminence Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça

In planning this Jubilee of Sport, the Dicastery for Culture and Education, the body responsible for the relationship between the Church and the world of sport, decided to formulate a multi-faceted programme to unite the various actors and aspects of sporting practice and pastoral care. More than a programme of races, the Dicastery wanted to connect sport to its essence, that is, to listen to it for what it is: a great human experience of the search for meaning, of the positive maturation of the importance of the collective and of the community. Indeed, the sporting experience today demands to be projected as a rich and decisive cultural action, because in fact it is profoundly so.

It is very useful to remember that sport is today one of the most extensive and decisive cultural experiences in terms of the transmission of values. During the historic passage of the Giro d’Italia through the Vatican on 1 June, promoted by this Dicastery for Culture and Education and the Governorate of Vatican City, Pope Leo said to the cyclists: “You are models for young people all over the world”. This phrase highlights the high responsibility that sport represents for society.
We hope that this Jubilee of Sport may reawaken in athletes and in the public at large this awareness that they too are missionaries of hope. To speak about sport is not only to speak about sport: it is always to talk about human beings, their reasons for life, their joys, their desires for transcendence and the infinite. It is worth listening carefully to the world of sport. Therefore in the press conference, we all wanted to give space to the voices of Novella Calligaris and Amelio Castro Grueso.

So, on Saturday morning (14 June), after listening together to the catechesis of Pope Leo XIV at teh Jubilee Audience, where a precise reference to the Jubilee of sport is expected, we will hold the international conference “The Leap of Hope”, which proposes to reflect on the human, pedagogic and spiritual value of sport. Following the methodology of reciprocal sharing, it will propose that we listen to th voices of those who are directly engaged in sporting practice, and those who work in sports pastoral care. The aim is to discern the paths to be taken increasingly to affirm sport as a shared sign of hope for everyone.

A particular event during the Conference will be the announcement of the winners of the photography competition “Sport in Motion”, promoted by the Dicastery between November last year and this April. With the participation of many young people from various continents, the competition has tried to bring together three words that are close to one another, but whose relationship can still be developed a lot: youth – art – sport.

In other words, we wanted to reinterpret sport through the eyes of the young, because they are the special seekers and bearers of an “outlook of hope”. In this regard, I would like to recall the five categories of the competition: Sport and family, Sport and disability, Sport and politics, Sport and ecology, and Sport and hope.

On Saturday, at 17.00, starting from Piazza Pia, we will experience one of the most symbolic Jubilee gestures: the passage through the Holy Door of Saint Peter’s Basilica. In a moment organized in collaboraiton with Athletica Vaticana, we will pray and walk together, learning to be artisans of hope and peace. The Vatican journalist Giampaolo Mattei, president of Athletica, will present to you the details of this proposal.

Then, in the cultural sphere, on Saturday evening, in collaboration with the Piccolo America Foundation, Hugh Hudson’s classic film Chariots of Fire will be screened in Piazza San Cosimato, Trastevere. Since cinema is an important narrative form, we want to recall how much this film still has to say to us today.

And undoubtedly, the great moment of spiritual convergence of this Jubilee of the world of sport will be the Holy Mass, on Sunday morning, presided over by Pope Leo XIV. In the ultimate celebration of the mystery of faith, our sketchy and fragile hopes will gain the strength of real and concrete mission paths. Thank you.

Intervention of Amelio Castro Grueso

I participated in the Paralympics in Paris 2024 in fencing: I am one of the eight athletes of the Paralympic Refugee team. I would never, ever had imagined that sport would be the path for the hope of my rebirth. My hopes were dashed after my mother was killed when I was sixteen years old. I was born and raised in a beautiful but complicated part of Colombia.

When I was alone in hospital after the accident that caused me to lose the use of my legs at the age of twenty, I would never, ever have imagined that I would compete in the Paralympics, and above all, that I would have a life that made me happy. In hospital I was abandoned by my family, and yet that period in hospital was the best part of my life because there, confined to the bed, I discovered God’s love, and experienced his Grace.

A year ago, in Paris, I was fencing with the strongest in the world. I was admitted to the Games at the very last moment. I lost and I won. Always “just barely”. I missed a few hits and, above all, was lacking a lot of experience. Supporting me in Paris was, in a voluntary style, Daniele Pantoni, coach of the Italian national team (at the Olympics he won the gold medal with two female fencers he coached) who has been with me like a second father since I met him in 2018 in Calì, at an international competition. I approached him and a friendship was struck.

In the Paralympic Refugee team I feel, humbly, like a little voice for those who are voiceless, through the experience of sport.

In Paris I did not win a medal. But I believed and I learned even to enjoy defeat as a fundamental moment of growth after giving all of oneself. With this attitude, I hope to win at the Los Angeles Paralympics in 2028.

When in September 2022 I arrived in Rome, I spent a year sleeping at the diocesan Caritas hostel in Via Marsala, at Termini Station. In 2023 I obtained refugee status and lived, until last January, in the second-level reception and integration System at Centocelle. Now I am trying to build a life that does not revolve around reception structures.

In order to train, in the Fiamme Oro-State Police Sports Centre at Tor di Quinto, every day for almost three years I cross Rome in my wheelchair. I push myself, alone, for as many as four hours a day: it is not always possible to have access to transport facilities for disabled people. I have fallen along the way many times, but I always get up again. And I set out again.

My dream? It is simple: to do God’s will, to be his tool to bear witness to his love for the people I meet, especially in the world of sport. I know I have never been alone in my life. And I know that I will never be alone, because God is beside me. They tell me I am a bit “loco” because I smile all the time, despite my circumstances. But how can you fail to smile when you experience directly that God never abandons you? With the grace and love of God, I will never let myself be robbed of hope.

Intervention of Giampaolo Mattei

On Sunday 1 June, we saw a first, extraordinary stage that anticipated the Jubilee of Sport, with the passage of the Giro d'Italia cyclists through the Vatican: welcomed, greeted, encouraged, blessed and applauded by Pope Leo XIV. The Pope reminded the athletes of their being “models for young people all over the world”, relaunching a sporting vision attentive “to the whole human being: body, mind, heart and spirit”.

On 27 May, with the Naples football club, Leo XIV also spoke about the “team working together”, emphasizing in particular the “educational aspect”. The issue, for the Pope, is being “very careful of the moral quality of the experience of sport at competitive level, because the human growth of the young is at stake. I think we understand each other, and there is no need for many words”.

The Jubilee of Sport will be lived along these lines; it is not a competitive event, a championship, a tournament. It is a Christian experience that sportspeople – professionals and amateurs of every age, with managers, coaches, organizers, enthusiasts and their families – will live together. Like a single great team, all with the same dignity, without considering the medal tally. An experience of conversion that can enable the world of sport to be more aware of its own role, also regarding central matters of an inclusive and social character, and of peace.

A particularly significant and defining moment of the Jubilee of sport – the central point of which is the celebration of Holy Mass on Sunday 15, presided over by Leo XIV – is the pilgrimage to the Holy Door of Saint Peter’s Basilica.

The appointment for the pilgrimage of sportspeople is on Saturday 14 at 17.00, in Piazza Pia, following the Pope’s Jubilee audience in the morning and the testimonies in the Auditorium of the Augustinianum.

In the style of simplicity and sporting fraternity, the pilgrimage from Piazza Pia to the Holy Door of Saint Peter’s Basilica is open to all sportspeople, without the need to register.

In Piazza Pia, Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Eduation, will preside over a moment of prayer before the beginning of the pilgrimage along Via della Conciliazione, which will become a “track” with a High finish line.

The passage from the First Letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians (9:24-27) will be proclaimed in English and Italian, and the Lord’s Prayer will be recited. The pilgrimage will be accompanied by songs in the tradition of the Taizé Community, considering the participation of sportspeople from different countries.

In this context, a representation from the French Episcopal Conference will hand to Athletica Vaticana – the Holy See’s official multi-sport association – the “Cross of Sportspeople”, a spiritual reference for the 2024 Paris Olympics and Paralympics in the Chapel of the athletes in the Church of the Madeleine. Thomas Bach, president of the international Olympic Committee, will be present at this event.

The same Cross was placed in the Chapel for sportspeople at the 2012 London Games, and in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. Blessed by Pope Francis on the occasion of World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro in 2013, it was also taken to World Youth Day in Lisbon in 2023. Athletica Vaticana will consign the “Cross of Sportspeople” to the dioceses in whose territory the winter and summer Olympics and Paralympics will be held, from time to time, following the tradition of the Cross of the World Youth Days.