Distinguished Gentleman,
I am happy to greet in you, with sincere cordiality, the executives and leaders of the
Italian sports world, daily engaged in the not easy task of spreading the idea and practice of
sports throughout the Italian nation.
I still have in mind the spectacle of last 12 April in the Olympic stadium, filled with
young people gathered there form every part of the world to celebrate the Jubilee of the
Redemption. It was one of the most characteristic manifestations of the Holy Year, filled with
enthusiasm, hope and faith.
On that occasion, I was able to launch a message to all athletes, inviting them to work for
the building of a new civilization founded on love solidarity and peace. On the same occasion
you, executives of CONI, signed the “Sports Manifesto”, pledging to make your own the
principles and values contained in it, that athletes might be a real instrument for reconciliation
and peace, for man and the world.
Your presence here today is tied with that event. You have requested this visit because, in
your desire to spread everywhere your specific contribution of ideas and initiatives, you have
accepted and intend to re-launch that appeal during the International Youth Year.
So, while I express to you my strong encouragement in furthering your proposals, I want
to express once more my full appreciation for the positive values of sports, understood in its
most authentic contents, without its degenerating, as is so very easy, into being considered an
end in itself or instrumentalized for party ends.
2. Competitive sports per se, because of the effort it requires to achieve ideal physical
condition, is above all an enhancement of the body, well-being and care of health. Because of
the implicit commitment to sacrifice, tenacity, discipline, self-control, with a view to a
concrete prospect of victory, it is a training of the will, a constant school of human formation
and personal in maturity.
In addition, sports, which is certainly engagement under the form of competition, also
provides training in the spirit of collaboration, solidarity, loyalty, sincerity, brotherhood and is
a gymnasium for the human virtues which are at the base for civil living; in short, the practice
of sport is a school for social education.
Dating from the time of the first Olympic contests in ancient Greece, sports has
contributed to nourishing love for one's country and keeping alive the bonds of distant citizens
with their own land. And today, having become a phenomenon on an international level,
because of the frequent opportunities for encounters between peoples of various backgrounds,
it is a coefficient of friendship without boundaries, of coexistence beyond languages, of
harmony in the name of common values, and a sure element of universal peacemaking.
Precisely in anticipation of the International Youth Year, while celebrating the XVIII
World Day of Peace, I intended to emphasize the binominal peace and youth: "Peace and
Youth Go Forward Together". Young people want to be, and rightly so, the protagonists of
the future and the builders of a new civilization based on brotherly solidarity. Well, they
already have at hand one of the most valid and convincing instruments. Sports, mostly
practiced by young people, constitute no negligible factor of peace in building the new
society.
3. I am anxious to add quickly, however, that the undertaking will become easier and more
effective if there is an adequate increase in the number of young protagonists able to live even
higher values and able to introduce a sincerely spiritual commitment into their athletic
activities.
Then, besides being a factor of human and social education, athletic competition will
become the practice of Christian virtues, a school of religious education, or rather the
education of man in his totality. Linked to the prospect of setting ever new and more
ambitious records, which subjects physical capacities to the effort of attaining optimal
conditions, is the interior joy of glorifying God in the body as St. Paul expresses it (cf. 1Cor
6:20).
Then, with man's development the maturity of believers is also attained. And life,
enriched by supernatural values, becomes a response to God's plan and worthy of being lived
to the full.
In this way, the gift of youth, which is both the hope and the foundation for a better
civilization, is offered to modern society.
With these hopes and my best wishes far a good year, I renew my cordial greeting,
accompanied by Blessing.