“Five years after plunging into the world of googlies, square leg and spin bowling with the formation of its own cricket team, the Vatican has founded its first ever athletics association.
Launched on Thursday, the running club consists of 60 members, including soldiers from the Swiss Guard, employees of the Vatican City State, officers from the gendarmerie, the city state’s tiny police force, priests and nuns.
Inspiration for the track team came from a group of Vatican employees who meet regularly along the banks of the Tiber, which curves through Rome just a few hundred yards from St Peter’s Basilica.
The youngest club member is a 19-year-old Swiss Guard, while the oldest is a 62-year-old professor who works in the Vatican’s Apostolic Library.
Aside from working up a sweat, the aim is to use sport to promote inter-religious dialogue and understanding.
It could be a while before the Vatican’s yellow and white flag flutters over the Olympics, but the Holy See team plans to participate in other competitions, such as the Mediterranean Games and the Games of the Small States of Europe – open to countries with fewer than one million people.
Giovanni Malago, the president of the Italian Olympic Committee, welcomed the formation of the association but jokingly asked them not to be too good.
“Just don’t get too big,” he told Vatican officials at the launch, recalling how an athlete from Kosovo won an Olympic medal when she defeated her Italian rival in the final of the women’s 52kg judo event at the Rio de Janeiro Games.
The club, called Vatican Athletics, will compete for the first time this month, when members take part in a run in Rome, La Corsa di Miguel, which commemorates Miguel Sanchez, an Argentine distance runner who was one of the thousands of people who were murdered during the country’s Dirty War.”
