SPORTS SHOULD PROMOTE HUMAN DIGNITY, PEACE AND TOLERANCE

VATICAN CITY, MAY 8, 2000 (VIS) - The Pope this morning welcomed 150 members from the 51 countries which belong to the European Union of Football Associations (U.E.F.A.). In introductory remarks in Italian, he highlighted the presence of football federations from Eastern Europe "which, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, witness once again to the will for peace and fraternity which animates your federations."

Speaking English, he observed that football is both a "widespread sporting activity which involves a great number of people, in particular, young people" and a "major mass phenomenon involving many individuals and families." He then pointed to the responsibility of organizers and promoters "never to lose sight of the significant educational possibilities which football, like other similar sporting disciplines, can develop.

"In a special way, sportsmen, especially the more famous, should never forget that they in fact become models for the world of youth." They should "carefully develop human and spiritual qualities which will make them truly positive examples in the public mind." And football, he stressed, should "never lose its genuine characteristic of being a sporting activity" nor be "submerged by other concerns, especially economic ones."

Then, in French, John Paul II reminded U.E.F.A. members that they are in Rome on their Jubilee Year pilgrimage. "How can we not see in the Jubilee," he asked, "an invitation to make sports also become an occasion of authentic promotion of the greatness and the dignity of mankind? In this perspective, football structures are called to be a terrain of authentic humanity where young people are inspired to learn life's great values and to spread the great virtues which are at the basis of a worthy, human coexistence, such as tolerance, respect for human dignity, peace and fraternity."

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