Cardinal Newman said that great works are done by individuals and not by a system. I think that goes for ideas as well. Five years ago, many people in the system chortled and laughed when the then Australian ambassador to the Holy See, John McCarthy, suggested that the Vatican should have its own cricket team. I told the ambassador he had a great idea and was immediately made a foundation committee member of what is now The Vatican St Peter’s Cricket team.
The idea was to form a team from the seminarians and young priests from cricket-playing countries who were studying in Rome at the various seminaries and pontifical universities. Ambassador McCarthy said it would show a good newsworthy and positive face about priests and the Catholic Church to a wide sports-interested world. The first team had Pakistani, Sri Lankan, English and Indian players with an Irish manager and a Canadian assistant manager. A few generous donors covered the costs including Dr Ishrat ul-Ebad, then governor of Sindh in Pakistan, because the Pakistani player (our opening batsman) was a seminarian from Karachi and the Argentinian ambassador to Pakistan because he was a friend of Pope Francis.
The inaugural match was against the Archbishop of Canterbury’s XI in August 2014 at the Kent County Cricket Club. Since then the annual return fixtures have developed into both ecumenical and inter-faith matches with teams also coming to Rome from England. A Muslim team came from Yorkshire in 2016.
In July this year the Vatican XI played eight matches in England, of which they won seven, against teams including Stonyhurst, the 450 years old Jesuit Public School, the Commonwealth Office hosted by Baroness Scotland, the Houses of Parliament team and several combined inter-faith teams.
Our final match was at Windsor Castle on July 14, 2018 against the Windsor Household after which Queen Elizabeth received the Vatican XI and committee members.
The Vatican St Peter’s cricket team has opened unexpected doors in inter-faith relations and ecumenism. Following on from the first match in 2014 against the Archbishop of Canterbury’s XI, a Catholic cardinal celebrated Solemn Mass in 2015 at the main altar in Canterbury Cathedral for the first time since the Reformation, the crozier of Pope St Gregory the Great was brought for several weeks from Rome to Canterbury in 2016 as a symbol of the desire for that unity which existed when Pope St Gregory sent St Augustine to England in 596 AD, and Anglican Choral Evensong was celebrated in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome in 2017.
Not a bad innings!
Columban Fr Robert McCulloch works as the Procurator-General in Rome, Italy.
Listen to Cricket at Windsor Castle
Related links
- Read more from The Far East, October 2018