Can the sporty be Godly? Why the Vatican is in the race to become a global sporting presence

Rien Schuurhuis (center) lines up at the start of the 2022 cycling world championships in Helensburgh, Australia. (Tim de Waele/Velo/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

Rien Schuurhuis never expected to win this year’s cycling world championships, nor come close to claiming the race’s distinctive rainbow jersey. For the sole representative of the Vatican City in the 200-strong field, simply being at the race in Switzerland was enough.

“If you just do cycling for winning, then most cyclists will be very miserable,” Schuurhuis tells CNN Sport. “A lot of riders, not only me, know before they start that they’re not going to win.”

This year’s world championships marked the latest and perhaps final chapter of Schuurhuis’ sporting odyssey with the Vatican, one that has seen him become the first cyclist to compete for the tiny city-state at an elite level.

Since 2022 – soon after the International Cycling Union (UCI), cycling’s global governing body, recognized the Vatican as a member – the Dutch-born rider has appeared at three world championships as well as September’s European Championships in Belgium, on each occasion proudly wearing his team’s yellow and white jersey.

Covering about 100 acres and with a population of 1,000 people, the Vatican is an unlikely presence at some of cycling’s biggest annual races. Yet over the years, Schuurhuis has assembled a small but vocal fan club.

“There was one hill in the (2022) world championships and everyone was yelling: ‘The Pope’s cyclist! The Vatican!’ So they all knew about me,” he says. “What I’ve now seen in Switzerland a few weeks ago, there’s even these supporter groups that have a flag of the Vatican and my name written on there.”

With winning a major title out of the question – Schuurhuis has been unable to finish a world championship race, such is the brutal nature of the competition – the focus is instead on spreading a message of inclusion and fraternity.

Athletica Vaticana – the Vatican’s first official sports association – was established in 2019, and Pope Francis soon earmarked cycling as a vehicle to promote unity, observing how teamwork in the peloton upholds “a spirit of selflessness, generosity and community in order to help those who have fallen behind.”

Given this mission statement, there is perhaps an irony in Schuurhuis being the only representative for the Vatican in major races. But the 42-year-old does have support from a small management team, which includes former professional cyclist Valerio Agnoli.

At every race, Schuurhuis’ ultimate aim has been to get people talking about the team and what it represents.

“If you’re in a breakaway in the early stages of the race,” he says, “you get a bit of exposure and that was a moment for, I guess, journalists and television and radio to talk about the goal we are there for. And that helps.”

‘Sport is such a leveler’

A keen cyclist and soccer player in his youth, Schuurhuis’ first taste of high-level sport came when he played in the I-League, the second tier of professional soccer in India. A move to Australia followed, and from there his focus switched to cycling, competing for semi-professional teams around Asia.

His family moved to Rome when his wife, Chiara Porro, was appointed as Australia’s Ambassador to the Holy See in 2020, offering an avenue for him to compete for the Vatican on the international stage.

Herself a keen athlete, Porro has also been involved in the state’s sporting projects, taking part in a relay race three years ago alongside teams of refugees, prison inmates and people with disabilities.

She describes Athletica Vaticana as “well developed” with priests, bishops, religious sisters, lay people, Swiss Guards and diplomats making up its members.

“(Sport) is such a leveler, it overcomes all sorts of barriers,” Porro tells CNN. “I think it’s about highlighting sport as another avenue for creating community cohesion, social cohesion, peacebuilding and development. It’s an avenue, like education and culture, for achieving other objectives which are much needed at the moment.”

The Vatican’s link with sport isn’t just limited to the past five years. The sportiest pope of recent decades was Pope John Paul II (1979-2005), a keen skier and swimmer who continued to hit the slopes after his election and even built an Olympic swimming pool in the papal summer residence of Castel Gandolfo.

Pope Francis, the first Latin American pontiff, is a soccer fan who played as a goalkeeper and supported San Lorenzo while growing up in Argentina. He once joked with Argentinian legend Diego Maradona – described by Pope Francis as a “poet” on the field – about the infamous “hand of God” goal in the 1986 World Cup quarterfinal against England.

“I asked him, jokingly, ‘So, which is the guilty hand?’” he wrote in a recently published memoir.

During Pope Francis’ pontificate, the Vatican’s engagement with the world of sport has ramped up significantly. As well as the establishment of Athletica Vaticana, the Dicastery for Culture and Education acts as a “ministry for sport” equivalent.

“Athletica Vaticana … has traveled its first leg at full speed, in a whirlwind of sports, solidarity and spiritual initiatives,” Giampaolo Mattei, the President of Athletica Vaticana, told CNN Sport. “On many occasions, Pope Francis has met and had words of encouragement and direction for ‘his’ team … calling himself the ‘coach of the heart’ of Vatican Athletica.”

As for Porro, who at 40 is one of the youngest ambassadors serving in the Vatican, she hopes that the Vatican might one day take part in the Olympics, pointing to the 2032 Brisbane Games in Australia as something to aim for.

After four years in Rome, her posting at the Vatican is due to finish at the end of the month, and she and Schuurhuis will return to Canberra, Australia, with their two children. Though the move will spell an end to Schuurhuis’ time competing for the Vatican, he is confident that he will keep pursuing cycling, his love for the sport stronger than ever before.

“This is who I am, this is what makes me happy,” he says. “Usually, it’s the best moment of the day, going out for a ride and feeling energized the whole day after.”