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Nuns on the run: Vatican launches athletics team and targets Olympics

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The Vatican has launched an athletics team with the aim of competing in international competitions – including the Olympics – as part of an agreement signed with the Italian Olympic Committee (Coni).

About 60 Holy See runners – Swiss Guards, priests, nuns, pharmacists and a 62-year-old professor who works in the Vatican’s Apostolic Library – are the first accredited members of Vatican Athletics. It is the latest iteration of the Holy See’s longstanding promotion of sport as an instrument of dialogue, peace and solidarity.

Because of the agreement with Coni, the team is now a part of the Italian track association and is looking to join the International Association of Athletics Federations. It is hoping to compete in international competitions, including the Games of the Small States of Europe – open to states with fewer than 1 million people – and the Mediterranean Games. The Vatican aims to sign similar agreements with the Italian Paralympic committee.

“The dream that we have often had is to see the Holy See flag among the delegations at the opening of the Olympic Games,” said Monsignor Melchor Jose Sánchez de Toca y Alameda, team president and the head of the Vatican’s sports department in the culture ministry. He said that was neither a short-term nor medium-term goal, and that for now the Vatican was looking to participate in competitions that had cultural or symbolic value. “We might even podium,” he added.

Italian Olympic Committee

Members of Vatican Athletic join in the club’s launch. Photograph: Andrew Medichini/AP

Team members wearing navy warm-up suits bearing the Holy See’s crossed keys seal attended the launch. Vatican pharmacist-runner Michela Ciprietti told a press conference the aim of the team is not exclusively competitive, but rather to “promote culture and running and launch the message of solidarity and the fight against racism and violence of all types”.

Coni president Giovanni Malago welcomed the birth of the Vatican team, even though he acknowledged it might one day deprive Italy of a medal. However he joked to Vatican officials: “Just don’t get too big.”

In recent years, the Vatican has fielded unofficial football teams and a cricket team that has helped forge relations with the Anglican church through annual tours in Britain. The track team, however, is the first one to have a legal status in Vatican City and to be an official part of the Italian sporting umbrella, able to compete in nationally and internationally sanctioned events and take advantage of the Italian national coaching, scientific and medical resources.

Vatican Athletics’ first official outing is the La Corsa di Miguel on 20 January, a 10km race in Rome honouring Miguel Sánchez, an Argentine distance runner who was one of the thousands of young people who “disappeared” during the country’s Dirty War. The choice is significant: Francis, the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, was a young Jesuit superior in Argentina during the military dictatorship’s crackdown on alleged leftist dissidents.

Source: theguardian.com

The post Nuns on the run: Vatican launches athletics team and targets Olympics appeared first on Athletics News.


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