Twenty-four-year-old Diego Di Mattia has stepped onto the tatami in Chuncheon, South Korea, to represent Athletica Vaticana at the World Taekwondo Championships in the Poomsae ("forms") discipline. Days prior, Pope Leo XIV personally encouraged him ahead of the major tournament. Established in January 2019, Athletica Vaticana is Vatican City’s very first sports association. Its ranks include citizens and Vatican employees - priests, nuns, Swiss Guards, museum staff- alongside honorary athletes, often asylum seekers, embodying a vocation for sports as a tool for dialogue, inclusion, and peace.
Already affiliated with the International Cycling Union and World Taekwondo, the association aims to become a permanent presence in other international disciplines, including the Olympics. Taekwondo, in particular, shares a special bond with this mission: it has long been practiced in refugee camps, breathing life into projects of hope for young people facing extreme hardship. A bond that, back in June, federation leaders sealed by personally presenting the Pope with the martial art's highest honor: the title of "master of peace."