A "holy game" of football

The club football season might be over in Europe and supporters of the so-called "beautiful game" preparing to follow the World Cup which kicks off in a couple of weeks time, but one important match remained to be played last weekend - the Clericus Cup final

As Agence France Presse (AFP) news agency reports, the match was in a sense the Catholic Church's very own version of the event to be hosted next month in South Africa and one in which "both teams could claim to have God on their side."

Players in prayer at the end of the match, Agence France Presse TV screen shot

The Clericus Cup is a tournament which has been contested annually since 2007 and is made up of teams whose players are all priests or seminarists from around the world attending the Vatican City's Papal colleges.

Saturday's final (there are no tournament games on a Sunday) was a repeat of last year's with holders Redemptoris Mater taking on rivals Pontifical North American College; the Italians once again running out the winners with the only goal of the game.

While the president of the Cup, Monsignor Claudio Paganini admitted that there had been several on-the pitch incidents and that perhaps not all the players had always "behaved entirely correctly" the competition had shown another side of the Catholic Church - away from the scandals that have dominated recent news stories.

http://www.france24.com/fr/20100530-football-avant-le-mondial-leglise-catholique-a-deja-son-champion

"At a time when the Church is being attacked over issues of paedophilia we're showing here how games and the body are values and not limitations," he told AFPTV.

"The human body should be used to give glory to God, not for acts of deviance."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlDslMckFCg

Redemptoris Mater have appeared in each of the four finals that have taken place since the Cup began in 2007.

The only time they have failed to lift the trophy was in 2008 when they lost out to Mater Ecclesiae.

Vatican rejects French nominated gay ambassador

Diplomatic relations between France and the Vatican aren't exactly at an all-time high.

In fact it wouldn't be unfair to call them somewhat strained - and that's in spite of the Papal visit to this country last month.

Twice France has attempted to appoint a new ambassador to the Holy See, and twice the Vatican's perhaps less than enlightened response has been a polite but definite refusal.

The post became vacant last December, coincidentally on the eve of the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy's visit to the Vatican, with the death of the then ambassador Bernard Kessedjian.

Paris - or more accurately, the French foreign ministry, looked around for a replacement and came up earlier this year with the 61-year-old writer and journalist, Denis Tillinac.

On the face of it Tillinac seemed like a sound choice. He was a close friend of the former French president, Jacques Chirac, and of course was a devout Catholic.

Just one slight problem - he had been married, divorced and was now remarried. So the Vatican said something along the lines of "grazie, ma non grazie" (although probably much more diplomatically) and rejected his nomination.

So the search began again and at one point there was talk of putting forward another writer - this time in the shape of the internationally acclaimed political historian, Max Gallo.

But finally the French settled for Jean-Loup Kuhn-Delforge, this country's former ambassador to Bulgaria, and currently head of the Consular Affairs Directorate at the foreign ministry in Paris, and a career diplomat.

But this is where you might be forgiven for thinking that perhaps Paris knew what the outcome of his nomination might be from the start.

For although Kuhn-Delforge is a practising catholic and has been in a long and stable relationship, it's with another man. He's openly gay.

So it perhaps came as no surprise last week that, as reported in the Italian daily, Corriere della Sera, the latest French attempt to fill the vacant post was once again politely but most firmly rejected.

Now it might strike you odd that the Pope might be able to sanction visiting a head of state who has been married three times and divorced twice - as he did just last month, but has a problem with that same country's diplomatic representation "back home" being either divorced or gay, but that's the way it is.

So France is scouting around for another possibility and has, according to the national daily Le Figaro, come up with the current ambassador to Russia, Stanislas Lefebvre.

The 61-year-old is married (and has remained so to just the one woman) with four children, so should by all accounts fit the bill.

But there again, there's no telling.