Vatican City, 4 October 2014 (VIS) –
This morning, in the Vatican's Paul VI Hall, the Pope received in
audience seven thousand disabled athletes, members of the Italian
Paralympic Committee. In his address he remarked that sport promotes
contact and relations with people from different cultures and
environments, and helps us become accustomed to accepting difference,
transforming it into an opportunity for mutual enrichment and
discovery. “Above all”, he affirmed, “sport becomes a valuable
opportunity to recognise that we are brothers and sisters walking
side by side, to favour a culture of inclusion and to reject
throwaway culture”.
Francis reiterated that this aspect of
sport becomes even more evident in relation to disabled athletes,
because the physical disability they experience, “through sport and
healthy competition, is transformed into a message of encouragement”
for those who find themselves in similar situations, and becomes “an
invitation to devote all your energies to doing good things together,
overcoming barriers that we may encounter around us, and above all,
those inside us”.
“Your witness, as athletes”, he
exclaimed, “is a great sign of hope. It is the proof that in every
person there is potential that at times we do not imagine, and that
may develop with trust and solidarity. God the Father is the first to
know this! He knows us better than any other, and He looks upon us
with trust, He loves us as we are, but he enables us to grow
according to what we are able to become. In this way, in your efforts
for sport without barriers, for a world without exclusion, you are
never alone” God our Father is with you!”.
“May sport therefore be for you a
place where you are able to train every day, in relation to
yourselves and others, a gymnasium that offers you the chance to get
to know new people and environments and that helps you to be an
active part of society”.
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