Dear friends who are playing or watching the Match of the Heart, this encounter of yours leads me to share some reflections, starting from the meaning of the words that define it: “match” and “heart”.

“Match” means, in this case, encounter. An encounter where even opponents find a cause that unites them: this year, in a particular way, that of children who ask for help, the children who arrive in Italy from war zones, and who are welcomed by the project of the Bambin Gesù Hospital and Foundation, and Caritas Italy. It seems increasingly difficult, almost impossible, to find spaces for listening to these things.

Another match comes to mind, the one narrated in a film, Joyeux Noël, and in a song by Paul McCartney, played on 25 December 1914 by some soldiers (German, French and English) in the so-called Christmas truce, near the town of Ypres, in Belgium.

It is still possible – it is always possible – to come together, even in a time of divisions, bombs and wars. It is necessary to create the opportunities to do so. To challenge divisions and to recognize that this is the greatest challenge: to come together. To contribute together to a good cause. To restore unity to broken hearts, ours and those of others. To recognize that in the heart of God, we are one. And that the heart is the place of the encounter with God and with others.

“Match” and “heart” thus become two words to conjugate together. And it is also good that this happens in a charitable event that is both sporting and televised. And which raises funds for life, for healing, not for destruction and death.

Sport – when it is experienced well by those who practice it and those who support it – has this greatness, that transfigures confrontation into encounter, division into inclusion. Loneliness into community. And television, when it is not only connection but also a communion of views, can make us rediscover each other, with love instead of hatred.

It is also significant that there are two teams playing today, one made up of politicians, and the other, singers. It tells us that politics can unite instead of divide, if it does not settle for the propaganda that feeds on the construction of enemies, but engages in the difficult and necessary art of exchange, in search of the common good. And it also reminds us how music enriches our words and our memories with meaning; ever since, as children, we began to speak and to remember. Children – to whom this encounter is dedicated – know these things. They have the purity of heart that allows them to see God.

I hope that every one of you, and all those who will be united by this event, and will help the project it supports, will look in the eyes of children and learn from them. To find the courage of welcome and to be men and women of encounter. And the strength to believe in and demand a truce, a time that stops the pursuit of hatred. Our humanity is at stake. May this match, which speaks of peace, score a point in its favour.

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Holy See Press Office Bulletin, 15 July 2025