Clericus Cup Cancelled

Jesuits versus Dominicans in 2011

In America, Jesuit schools are famous for their basketball teams.  In Europe, it’s soccer.  In Rome this week the Jesuit-run Pontifical Gregorian University defeated the Dominicans of the Angelicum 3-1 to win the Clericus Cup, the trophy in a soccer league involving 16 Roman colleges that train priests and seminarians. Clericus players and fans take their soccer seriously.  Last year local authorities, reacting to neighbors’ complaints, banned the use of tambourines, drums, and loudspeakers during league games played in the morning.  Here is a video about the tournament from 2010.  (Click here if you can’t see it.)

Link (here) to dotMagis

However......

A Vatican department has withdrawn its support from a soccer tournament that pits teams from Rome’s seminaries against each other because it has lost its “educational” value. Sixteen teams from Rome’s seminaries and religious orders compete against each other in the Clericus Cup tournament, including the “Martyrs” from the Pontifical North American College, the U.S. seminary in Rome, which placed fourth in 2011. The Rev. Kevin Lixey, who heads the Church and Sport office at the Pontifical Council for the Laity, said the decision came after the Clericus Cup stopped offering programs to help seminarians reach out to youth and teach them good sportsmanship, which was part of the original intent of the tournament. “They are just organizing a soccer tournament, and they are doing a good job. But this is not what we are interested in: we want to equip seminarians for their job in the field, to help them reach youth through sport,” he said.

Link (here) to read the full article at the Washington Post.