Pope Leo XIV this week praised the intentions of a charity soccer match between politicians and musicians that will help finance treatment for patients at the Vatican pediatric hospital, saying that it is good to be “gathering funds for life, for cures, not for destruction and death.”
According to Vatican News, the Vatican hospital Bambino Gesù and Caritas Italiana organized the football event to raise funds for “Progetto Accoglienza,” or “Project Welcome,” which will financially support underprivileged families whose children need treatment. The event will also include a concert, according to the outlet.
Pope Leo shared a July 15 video message for the match, emphasizing that it is an opportunity to increase unity among people amid a climate of division and destruction.
“It is still possible, it is always possible, to come together, even in a time of divisions, falling bombs, and war,” Pope Leo said, according to Vatican News. “It is necessary to create the opportunities to do this. Challenge divisions and recognize that the greatest challenge is to come together.”
He also urged supporters of the project to “bring broken hearts back to unity,” adding that “in God’s heart we are one and that the heart is the place where we meet God and others.”
According to Vatican News, Pope Leo also praised the capacity that sports, music, and politics have to unite people.
Sports, “when lived well by those who practice and those who cheer — have this great thing about them, that they transform confrontation into encounter, division into inclusion, and solitude into community,”
Politics, which should work toward the common good through dialogue, can “unite instead of divide,” he said, “if it doesn’t settle with the propaganda that feeds on building enemies.”
Music can enrich words and memories with special meaning, the Pontiff remarked.
“Children — to whom this event is dedicated — know these things,” Pope Leo said. “They have the purity of heart that enables them to see God.”
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Author: McKenna Snow
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