This morning, 18^th December, the Dicastery received a visit from Dr Marco Giunio de Sanctis, president of the Italian Paralympic Committee (CIP). The meeting was attended by Monsignor Paul Tighe, Secretary of the Dicastery (Culture Section), Don Miguel Cardoso, Head of the Dicastery's Sports Sector, and Dr Giampaolo Mattei, President of Athletica Vaticana, the Holy See's official sports team.

The productive dialogue with Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, Prefect of the Dicastery that regulates the Church's relationship with the world of sport (Praedicate Evangelium, 154), provided the opportunity to analyse the current situation of Paralympic sport, which in Italy includes about 25,000 athletes, and to reflect on the urgent need for a change in language and mentality regarding the concept of disability, so as to bring Olympic and Paralympic sports initiatives closer together.

Pope Leo XIV, in his homily for the Jubilee of Sport (15 June), recalled the connection between sport, fragility and hope: «in a competitive society, where it seems that only the strong and winners deserve to live, sport also teaches us how to lose. It forces us, in learning the art of losing, to confront one of the deepest truths of our human condition: our fragility, our limitations and our imperfections. This is important, because it is through the experience of these limits that we open our hearts to hope ».