Church hierarchy and football

Pope holds shirt presented to him by Fr Marc Lyden-Smith, Sunderland Football Club's chaplain

One wonders what Cardinal Basil Hume would have made of the images of a beaming Pope Francis last week holding aloft a Sunderland football shirt printed with 'Papa Francisco', just days before the club’s big derby game with Newcastle United.

Hume of course was a huge Newcastle United supporter and would have been crestfallen at what now looks like a clear case of divine intervention in the stunning 2:1 defeat of his team on Sunday.

Football has long been akin to another religion for some in the church hierarchy.

Pope Francis is famously a card-carrying fan of San Lorenzo football club in his native Buenos Aires. Despite being domiciled in the Vatican, he still pays his monthly club membership subs according to the club’s vice president, Marcelo Tinelli. Pope Francis also granted Italy's and Argentina's national football teams a private audience at the Vatican in August.

But the Papal record for audiences with football teams must surely rest with Pope John II.

He gave the Republic of Ireland football team a private audience during the World Cup in Italy in 1990 and famously told goalkeeper Packie Bonner that he had also played in goal when he was growing up in Poland. A few days after meeting the Pope, Ireland were knocked out of the World Cup by a single goal. Legend has it that after the match team manager Jack Charlton turned to Bonner and said: “By the way, the Pope would have saved that.”

More famously, John Paul II also granted a private audience to Italian club side Napoli and their tempremental star player Diego Maradona during the late eighties. Typically, Maradona arrived at the Vatican late and then proceeded to have an argument with the Pope. In his book, I Am The Diego, published in 2000, Maradona wrote: “Yes, I argued with the Pope. I argued with him because I was in the Vatican and I saw all these golden ceilings and afterwards I heard the Pope say the Church was worried about the welfare of poor kids. So? Sell the ceilings, amigo! Do something!”

In what was likely to have been a quieter Vatican audience in 2004, John Paul II also met and blessed his beloved Polish national team. He also had a lifetime membership of Barcelona, given to him by the Spanish giants after he celebrated Mass at the Nou Camp stadium in 1982.

In 1987, German club Schalke 04 made Pope John Paul II an honorary member, after he celebrated Mass at Schalke’s Parkstadion in 1987. Not to be outdone, Schalke’s bitter local rivals, Borussia Dortmund, awarded him the same accolade when John Paul II granted two of their players an audience in 2005 for their work in helping to stamp out child prostitution.

John Paul II is also known as the 'protector' of Brazil’s Fluminense. The club’s famous chant is the 'A Bênção, João de Deus' - 'Bless us, John of God', a tune composed in the Pope’s honour during his visit to Brazil in 1980. Legend has it Fluminense fans burst into the song in 1984, during a tense penalty shootout against rivals Vasco da Gama - Fluminense won the shootout and the Brazilian championship.

However, the team John Paul II really supported was Krakow based KS Cracovia. This was the team he watched as a young man, and it appears to have been a love that remained with him throughout his life - just a few months before he died he granted KS Cracovia’s team and staff a private audience, his last meeting with a football club.

Then there’s Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the former Vatican Secretary of State. A lifelong Juventus fan, he used to commentate on their matches for local radio while he was Archbishop of Genoa and long dreamt of establishing a Vatican football team.

In 2006 he famously said – not entirely in jest – that he wanted to create a team that could compete in Italy’s top flight, “with Roma, Inter Milan, Genoa and Sampdoria”. “If we just take the Brazilian students from our Pontifical universities we could have a magnificent squad,” he said.

However, Bertone had to be content with establishing the Clericus Cup, the annual football tournament between 16 teams from church seminaries in Rome which is now in its seventh year. The competition grew out of a friendly tournament, The Rome Cup, originally organised by Fr Jim Mulligan, now chaplain at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington.

The holders for the last two years have been the North American Pontifical College, so the Clericus Cup is one of the rare (association) football competitions that can be said to be dominated by North America.

Incidentally there is also a Vatican City international team, which has been managed in the past by no less a personage than former Italy and Ireland coach Giovanni Trapattoni. The players are drawn from the Swiss Guard and other Vatican staffers but the team has only played three full international matches in eleven years, one draw and two defeats to Monaco.

However, lest football fans get too excited about the Papacy’s love of the beautiful game, it is probably worth mentioning that earlier this month Pope Francis officially launched St Peter’s Cricket Club.

Undeterred by George Bernard Shaw’s belief that the English weren’t very spiritual “so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity”, Francis hopes the club will forge ties with cricket teams of other faiths.

That said, the club’s main aspiration at the moment appears to be what amounts to a local derby match against a Church of England 11 at Lord’s next year. I wonder if women seminarians are eligible to take the field for the Anglicans? Could prove a sticky wicket, Francis should stick to The People's Game.