As the world prepares for the 2026 Winter Olympics and Paralympics in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, the Church has launched an initiative to ensure that amid the competitions and stress, athletes can find a place to pray and reflect. Source: OSV News.
At a press conference in Milan last week, the Milan Archdiocese launched “For Each Other,” a program that will coincide with the February 6-22 Olympic Games and the March 6-15 Paralympic Games.
“For me, the aim of our contribution is to be against the banality of sport, meaning sport reduced to performance, to exaggerated competitiveness, to business, to idolatry,” Milan Archbishop Mario Delpini said.
“Sport is good for people and not just for the excellent result achieved – which is naturally one of the goals of the competitions – but against banality. We want to say that people are made not only of a body that is perfect and capable of excellent performance but of a soul, of a relationship, of a capacity for sharing, of attention so that no one is left behind,” he added.
The Vatican Dicastery for Culture and Education will also co-sponsor the initiative.
In a message read at the conference, Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, prefect of the dicastery, highlighted the important role the church plays in fostering an atmosphere of genuine sportsmanship.
The Church, he said, wants to contribute to the sports’ world not by “denying the value of competition, but by guiding it so that it is not dominated by an individualistic mindset and instead is rather open to the dimension of the common good”.
The archdiocese said the “For Each Other” will run from tomorrow (Thursday) to mid-March and will feature activities, performances and events hosted in parishes across Milan.
Cardinal Tolentino also said that during the initiative’s opening Mass tomorrow, the “Cross of Sportspeople” will be formally entrusted to the archdiocese by Athletica Vaticana, the Holy See’s sports association.
The cross, which was blessed by Pope Francis at the 2013 World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro, has been placed in chapels in the Olympic host cities of London in 2012 and Paris in 2024.
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Milan Archdiocse unveils ‘For Each Other’ initiative ahead of Winter Games (By Junno Arocho Esteves, OSV News)
