Vatican puts soul back into sports

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Bless me Father, for I have committed a foul in the penalty area.


The Vatican, long in the business of souls, is now getting into the business of sports. Or more precisely, it is getting into the business of putting the soul back into sports.


The Vatican has set up a department whose stated aim is to help re-inject fundamental values of fairness, ethics, transparency and legality into sports.


Neatly coinciding with next week's opening of the Olympic Games in Athens, the department, called Church and Sport, has been opened as part of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Laity.


"Every time you pick up the paper you see how urgent it is to promote ethics in sports," said Father Kevin Lixey, the head of the department, whose establishment was announced on Tuesday.


"Sports involves every single person. People talk about it in the coffee bars, on the buses, kids practise it," Lixey told Reuters in a telephone interview.


"The Church has to be a part of this world," he said.


A statement announcing the new department said this month's Olympics in Athens are "another clear sign of how much sport has become an important element in the life of our societies."


It said the department had become necessary because many tendencies in sport had distanced people from its original ideals.


Since sport had become "one of the nerve centres of contemporary culture" the statement said the 1 billion member Roman Catholic Church should see the world of sports as a fertile ground to spread its evangelical message.


The new department would draw attention to Pope John Paul's speeches and writings on ethics in sports and propose studies on various aspects, including doping, violence and excessive commercialism.


The 84-year-old Pope was an avid sportsman in his youth and he has slowed down only in the last decade because of Parkinson's disease and arthritis.


The new department would also promote the church's vision of sport as a means to promote "the integral growth of the person and as an instrument in the service of peace and fraternity among people".


The Pope, who encouraged the establishment of the department, is no stranger to that.


As a teenager in his hometown of Wadowice, Poland, in the 1930s, he played for the high school's Jewish soccer team when they were short of players.


And, if he ever did commit any fouls in the penalty area, one could safely assume he has since been forgiven.