AS OUR favourite primetime television programmes are elbowed roughly out of their slots by unruly footballers, so we must turn to radio for an appreciation of “the beautiful game”. Yes, there is still such a thing; but it is not played in the celebrity-crazed environment of the Premier League, but in the more modest Clericus Cup. The Universal Church has embraced the Universal Game, and is hoping to spread the good news on the football pitches of the world.
All was explained in Papal Ball (Radio 4, Friday), presented by the writer and comedian Danny Robins. The Clericus Cup is a football competition for seminarians based in Rome, and is intended as a demonstration that the game need not necessarily entail match-fixing and fake injuries.
It was devised by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Archbishop of Genoa and a die-hard Juventus fan (in his spare time he appears on local radio as a commentator). There are some small deviations from the professional game: the priests play for only 30 minutes each way, and the normal two infringement cards — red and yellow — are augmented by a blue card, which denotes a temporary five-minute sending-off.
One might have hoped that these cards would remain in the referee’s pocket, but the Clericus Cup bears witness to the high spirits occasionally exhibited on the field, even by those in training for holy orders. Nor is humility a consistent characteristic of these games: one player from the United States was keen to tell us that he was the leading goal-scorer in the competition. By contrast, the plucky Brits were humble and good-humoured in defeat. They had to be, since they suffered score-lines that might have made the Faroe Islands blush.
All this is part of a wider initiative to encourage priests to think of sport as a way of engaging with their flock, but another issue it raised was that of national and religious loyalties. The competitors organised themselves into national teams, and, as the players warmed up by praying together, their supporters chanted national anthems.
The example of these teams of trainee priests drawn up into national squads for friendly competition might be intended as an inspiration for the wider footballing world, but it would also have served well in the questions and answers after the first of this year’s Reith Lectures (Radio 4, Tuesday of last week). The theme this year is China, and the starting point of the lecturer, Professor Jonathan Spence, was the growing influence of Confucianism in contemporary China.
The Archbishop of Westminster, who was in the audience, wondered to what extent the Chinese government would facilitate religious tolerance. Professor Spence is clearly not used to fielding such broad questions in the carefully packaged environment of the Reith Lectures, but, in response, he opined that the signs are not good. There is still a mistrust of anyone who appears to recognise authorities outside the Chinese political system.
Pope Benedict has not yet decided whether to visit China during the Olympics, but, if he does, perhaps he could take along one of his teams of seminarians to show the authorities how it is done.
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