Vatican Prepares for Summer Olympics with Conference on Faith and Sports

Mendonça noted that the conference will look at sports today in order to “understand why it is so popular,” as well as to “identify its risks” and “assess its relevance for building a more fraternal, tolerant, and equitable society.” 

The conference will bring together some 200 participants, including representatives from the Vatican, athletes, sports club managers, journalists, academics, pastoral representatives from different European dioceses, and philosophers for a series of roundtable discussions. 

“In essence, there are two fundamental questions that we want to answer with this conference: What does sport have to say to the Church? What does the Church have to say to sport?” Mendonça said. 

The first day, based on the theme “Church and Sport: A Relationship We Need to Deepen,” will include a series of discussions on these fundamental questions, including: “The Church at the Olympic Games,” “Sport in the Parish,” and “Catholic Schools and Sport.” 

“If we look at the history of sport in parallel with the history of the Church, there have been many moments in which sport has been an inspiration and a metaphor for the life of Christians, or Christianity itself has enriched sport with its humanistic vision,” Mendonça said. 

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The second day will take a philosophical and anthropological approach, aimed at understanding the connection between mind, body, and sport through a different panel discussions such as “Sport: A Challenge for Humanization,” “Resurrection of the Body through Sport,” and “Disappearance of the Self and the Body.” 

“We will address the implications of a certain technicalization of sports practice, brought forward by the constant search for performance if not for records,” Mangin said.  

“The dazzling progress of Paralympic athletes, increasingly better equipped, provides an exceptional vision of the evolution of the human body, which some already wish to increase,” she said.  

The event will close on Saturday, May 18, with “The Relay Race of Solidarity” held at Rome’s iconic Circus Maximus at 4 p.m.