Sports can convey "the idea that it is possible to compete without hating each other," Pope Leo XIV told a delegation of Italian Olympic athletes at the Vatican on April 9, 2026. He also warned against the logic of "performance at any cost, which can lead to doping."
Athletes from the Winter Games in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo visited the Vatican for a special audience on the moral and educational value of sports.
The large delegation of Italian athletes and officials from the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games were involved in competitions earlier this year in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, a resort town in the Dolomites. Alongside the medalists, several athletes who finished in fourth place also received an invitation to attend. Leo XIV congratulated them all on their achievements, highlighting the "stories of sacrifice, of discipline” and “of tenacity" shared throughout the Games.
A witness to a better world
Athletes, the Pope said, can be "witnesses of an honest and beautiful way of inhabiting the world." He noted that they demonstrate "that it is possible to compete without hating each other. That it is possible to win without humiliating. That one can lose without losing oneself."
This truth, he assured them, "applies even beyond sport."
Leo XIV cautioned against the temptations of modern athletics, particularly "performance at any cost, which can lead to doping." He also criticized a profit-driven way of thinking "which transforms the game into a market and the athlete into a star," as well as the temptation of "spectacle, which reduces the athlete to an image or a number."
Through sports, he added, "we learn to know our own bodies without idolizing them, to control our emotions, to compete without losing our sense of fraternity, to accept defeat without despair, and victory without arrogance."
A school of fraternity
"No one wins alone," the Pope insisted. He emphasized the role of families, coaches, and support teams on the journey to victory. The Pontiff also highlighted the vital role sport plays in education and self-knowledge. Through sports, he added, "we learn to know our own bodies without idolizing them, to control our emotions, to compete without losing our sense of fraternity, to accept defeat without despair, and victory without arrogance."
The Pontiff, who published an apostolic letter on sports titled Life in Abundance to coincide with the Winter Olympics, concluded by entrusting the athletes with a mission: to ensure that “the human person must always remain the focal point of sport in all its expressions."
