Sports as seen by young people

“Sport in Motion — The essential is invisible to the eye” is the theme of the international photography contest promoted by the Holy See’s Dicastery for Culture and Education in light of the Jubilee. It is open to young people aged 25 years and under.

“Sport and Hope” is the overarching category, with four subcategories: “Sport and Family”, “Sport and Ecology”, “Sport and Disability”, and “Sport and Politics”.

Unpublished photos can be submitted up until 30 April 2025 to the following email address: sportinmotion@dce.va. Photos may not be modified with artificial intelligence and must have been taken after 2020. Participation is free and open to everyone 25 years and under, professional and non-professional photographers alike. Additional information can be found on the Dicastery for Culture and Education website: www.dce.va.

Thirteen photographs will be awarded (one for the “Sport and Hope” category and three for each of the subcategories). Winners will be announced on Saturday, 14 June, during the “Jubilee of Sport” event.

The winners will have the opportunity to meet Pope Francis, to visit the Vatican Museums, and to have their photographs published through the Vatican media.

The contest is made possible through the collaboration of various partners, including “L’Osservatore Romano”, the Global Compact on Education, the Pontifical Foundation Gravissimum educationis and Athletica Vaticana. The jury is composed of representatives from these organizations, together with Giovanni Zenoni, a young sports photographer, and Arturo Mariani, who played for the Italian National Amputee Football Team and is now a coach.

“The final goal of this contest is to bound together three words that are often not as close as they should be: sport-youth-art”, explained Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, Prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education in a press release. The initiative aims to be “an artistic platform through which youth can tell their hope of and through sport”. Another objective is to display the educative dimension of sports, that is, “the unity between culture and education”.

The contest is therefore a proposal for young people, especially those involved in the world of sports, “so that they can become producers, and not mere consumers, of art”, reads the press release. The goal is to give young people a space to share “reality through their eyes, so that they can show adults what adults often miss, the essential that is invisible to the eye” (cf. The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry).

Centred around the main theme of hope, the four contest categories (family, ecology, disability and politics) propose a complete, multi-faceted vision of the sporting experience. The Cardinal also notes that because “sport is often weakened by elements of corruption, violence, racism, doping”, it is even more necessary “to communicate hope through sport, making it more and more a human space” and “a light of hope” for humanity.

Giampaolo Mattei