St. Maria Goretti Parish

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Sport, with its demands for self-giving, collaboration and perseverance, reflects the beauty and dynamic love of God, Pope Leo XIV said.

Celebrating Mass in St. Peter's Basilica June 15 to conclude the Jubilee of Sport, the pope told athletes and sports professionals that "every good and worthwhile human activity is in some way a reflection of God's infinite beauty, and sport is certainly one of these."

The Mass, attended by a variety of teams and groups in colorful sporting jerseys, marked the conclusion of a weekend of celebrations of the world of sport throughout Rome. Pilgrims and athletes participated in events including a procession through the Holy Door, panel discussions with athletes on sports and hope, and a sports village in the center of the city intended to bring together the world of athletics with faith, prayer and fraternity.

The celebration coincided with the feast of the Holy Trinity, a convergence the pope said was not accidental. Speaking on the relational nature of the Trinity, he noted how "the life of God is a kind of 'dance'" of "mutual love."

"Sport can thus help us to encounter the Triune God, because it challenges us to relate to others and with others, not only outwardly but also, and above all, interiorly," he said.

Reflecting on the Italian word "Dai!" -- often shouted by fans to cheer athletes and which literally means "Give!" -- the pope said sport is not just about performance. Instead, "it is about giving of ourselves, putting ourselves 'in play.'"

"Being a 'good sport' is more important than winning or not," he said.

Quoting St. John Paul II, he described sport as "joy of life, a game, a celebration," and emphasized its role in building friendship and openness, "quite apart from the harsh laws of production and consumption and all other purely utilitarian and hedonistic approaches to life."

Pope Leo then outlined three ways sport serves as a tool for human and Christian development. First, he said, it fosters a sense of community in an individualistic society. "Sport, especially team sports, teaches the value of cooperating, working together and sharing."

Second, in a digital world where "technology brings distant people closer together yet often creates distances between those who are physically close," sport offers real-life engagement and helps maintain "a healthy contact with nature and with real life, where genuine love is experienced."

Third, the pope said that sport teaches the value of failure and resilience in a competitive culture. "Champions are not perfectly functioning machines, but real men and women, who, when they fall, find the courage to get back on their feet."

He also pointed to figures like Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, patron of athletes, who is set to be canonized Sept. 7, as role models to follow in pursuing sainthood in the same way that one pursues athletic excellence. "Just as no one is born a champion, no one is born a saint," he said. "It is daily training in love that brings us closer to final victory."

Pope Leo urged athletes to live their vocation in the realm of sport with joy and faith.

"The church entrusts you with a beautiful mission: to reflect in all your activities the love of the Triune God," he said. "Let us ask (Mary) to accompany our effort and enthusiasm, and to guide it always toward the greatest victory of all: the prize of eternal life on that playing field where games will never end, and our joy will be complete."

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On the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, the Pope closes the Jubilee of Sport with a Mass, reminding everyone that sports can be a “means of reconciliation and encounter.”

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In a telegram for the Day of Life observed by the Church in England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, Pope Leo calls on Catholics to continue to bear witness to the God-given dignity of every person without exception.

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Pope Leo XIV addresses young people gathered in his hometown – Chicago – and urges them to build community, embrace God’s love, and become “beacons of hope” in today’s world.

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Amid the escalation of hostilities between Iran and Israel, the possibility of a spillover of war beyond regional borders raises fears of disastrous consequences.

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Amid the ongoing Jubilee of Sport, Father Chase Hilgenbrinck, a former professional football player, reflects on the positive values that sport offers as well as the fact that it can be a source of resilience and fraternity.

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VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- As conflict in the Middle East escalated with Israeli airstrikes on nuclear sites in Iran and retaliatory drone attacks on Israel, Pope Leo XIV appealed for restraint and renewed the church's calls for nuclear disarmament and peaceful dialogue.

Speaking to pilgrims at the end of a special Jubilee audience June 14, the pope expressed deep concern over the "seriously deteriorating" situation in the Middle East, warning of the consequences of further escalation. "I want to strongly renew an appeal to responsibility and reason," he said.

The pope emphasized that the pursuit of a safer world "free from the nuclear threat" must be rooted in "respectful encounter and sincere dialogue," laying the foundations for lasting peace "based on justice, fraternity, and the common good."

"No one should ever threaten the existence of another," he said. "It is the duty of all nations to support the cause of peace, taking paths of reconciliation and promoting solutions that ensure security and dignity for all."

The pope's comments came a day after Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned of stronger responses to the air strikes, fueling fears of wider conflict.

The following is the full text of Pope Leo XIV's address to those gathered to celebrate the Chicago-born pope's election:

 

My dear friends,

It’s a pleasure for me to greet all of you gathered together at White Sox Park on this great celebration as a community of faith in the Archdiocese of Chicago. A special greeting to Cardinal Cupich, to the auxiliary bishops, to all my friends who are gathered today on this: the feast of the Most Holy Trinity.

And I begin with that because the Trinity is a model of God’s love for us. God: Father, Son and Spirit. Three persons in one God live united in the depth of love, in community, sharing that communion with all of us.

So, as you gather today in this great celebration, I want to both express my gratitude to you and also an encouragement to continue to build up community, friendship, as brothers and sisters in your daily lives, in your families, in your parishes, in the Archdiocese and throughout our world.

I’d like to send a special word of greeting to all the young people - those of you gathered together today, and many of you who are perhaps watching this greeting through technological means, on the internet. As you grow up together, you may realise, especially having lived through the time of the pandemic - times of isolation, great difficulty, sometimes even difficulties in your families, or in our world today. Sometimes it may be that the context of your life has not given you the opportunity to live the faith, to live as participants in a faith community, and I’d like to take this opportunity to invite each one of you to look into your own hearts, to recognise that God is present and that, perhaps in many different ways, God is reaching out to you, calling you, inviting you to know his Son Jesus Christ, through the Scriptures, perhaps through a friend or a relative… a grandparent, who might be a person of faith. But to discover how important it is for each one of us to pay attention to the presence of God in our own hearts, to that longing for love in our lives, for … searching, a true searching, for finding the ways that we may be able to do something with our own lives to serve others.

And in that service to others we may find that coming together in friendship, building up community, we too can find true meaning in our lives. Moments of anxiety, of loneliness. So many people who suffer from different experiences of depression or sadness - they can discover that the love of God is truly healing, that it brings hope, and that actually, coming together as friends, as brothers and sisters, in community, in a parish, in an experience of living our faith together, we can find that the Lord’s grace, that the love of God can truly heal us, can give us the strength that we need, can be the source of that hope that we all need in our lives.

To share that message of hope with one another - in outreach, in service, in looking for ways to make our world a better place - gives true life to all of us, and is a sign of hope for the whole world.

To, once again, the young people who are gathered here, I’d like to say that you are the promise of hope for so many of us. The world looks to you as you look around yourselves and say: we need you, we want you to come together to share with us in this common mission, as Church and in society, of announcing a message of true hope and of promoting peace, promoting harmony, among all peoples.

We have to look beyond our own - if you will - egotistical ways. We have to look for ways of coming together and promoting a message of hope. Saint Augustine says to us that if we want the world to be a better place, we have to begin with ourselves, we have to begin with our own lives, our own hearts (cfr Speech 311; Comment on St John’s Gospel, Homily 77).

And so, in this sense, as you gather together as a faith community, as you celebrate in the Archdiocese of Chicago, as you offer your own experience of joy and of hope, you can find out, you can discover that you, too, are indeed beacons of hope. That light, that perhaps on the horizon is not very easy to see, and yet, as we grow in our unity, as we come together in communion, we can discover that that light will grow brighter and brighter. That light which is indeed our faith in Jesus Christ. And we can become that message of hope, to promote peace and unity throughout our world.

We all live with many questions in our hearts. Saint Augustine speaks so often of our “restless” hearts and says: “our hearts are restless until they rest in you, O God” (Confessions 1,1,1). That restlessness is not a bad thing, and we shouldn’t look for ways to put out the fire, to eliminate or even numb ourselves to the tensions that we feel, the difficulties that we experience. We should rather get in touch with our own hearts and recognise that God can work in our lives, through our lives, and through us reach out to other people.

And so I’d like to conclude this brief message to all of you with an invitation to be, indeed, that light of hope. “Hope does not disappoint”, Saint Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans (5,5). When I see each and every one of you, when I see how people gather together to celebrate their faith, I discover myself how much hope there is in the world.

In this Jubilee Year of Hope, Christ, who is our hope, indeed calls all of us to come together, that we might be that true living example: the light of hope in the world today.

So I would like to invite all of you to take a moment, to open up your own hearts to God, to God’s love, to that peace which only the Lord can give us. To feel how deeply beautiful, how strong, how meaningful the love of God is in our lives. And to recognise that while we do nothing to earn God’s love, God in his own generosity continues to pour out his love upon us. And as he gives us his love, he only asks us to be generous and to share what he has given us with others.

May you indeed be blessed as you gather together for this celebration. May the Lord’s love and peace come upon each and every one of you, upon your families, and may God bless all of you, so that you might always be beacons of hope, a sign of hope and peace throughout our world.

And may the blessing of Almighty God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit come upon you and remain with you always. Amen.