‘Athletics was my rebirth’: First Sport Synod takes place in Rome

By Joseph Tulloch

Over the past month, Rome hosted the Synod on Synodality, which brought together bishops, laity, priests and religious for a month of discussion and listening.

This synod inspired another, the very first “Synod of Sport”, which took place in Rome on the evening of Friday 25th October, organized by Vaticana Athletics.

Athletes of all stripes – Olympians, Paralympians and refugees – shared their stories and experiences in front of a packed auditorium in the Vatican’s San Calisto building.

The Synod of Sport event in Rome

Sport as a “renaissance”

The first to speak was Rigivan Ganeshamoorthy, gold medalist in the discus at the recent Paralympic Games in Paris.

Ganeshamoorthy, who was diagnosed in 2019 with Guillain-Barré syndrome, which causes rapid-onset muscle weakness, said he was never interested in sports before he started suffering from the disability.

“It was kind of a rebirth for me,” he said.

Andy Diaz and Fabrizio Donato then spoke. Donato, who won bronze in the triple jump at the 2012 London Olympics, welcomed Diaz into his home several years ago after arriving in Italy as a defector from Cuba.

Diaz was living on the streets in Italy and he called Donato for help. In addition to giving him a home, Donato began coaching him. Then, this summer, Diaz won a bronze medal at the Paris Olympics – 12 years to the day after Donato, whom he calls his “father and coach,” won his.

Sport “saved my soul”

But perhaps the most moving testimony of the evening was that of Mahdia Sharifi, a taekwondo practitioner from Afghanistan and member of the Refugee Olympic team.

She told the crowd that she decided to take up the sport when she was 11, after seeing a group of women training. Her father tried to dissuade her, thinking she might be discriminated against for participating in a stereotypically masculine sport, but his mind was made up. Sharifi began training in secret, eventually joining the national team.

Then came the Taliban takeover and Sharifi was forced to flee abroad. She spoke movingly of the trauma caused by the abandonment of her family, friends and teammates, as well as the dire situation of those still in Afghanistan: Sharifi’s mother is no longer allowed to work and his father was forced to close his business after being asked to pay taxes beyond his annual profits.

Amid it all, Sharifi said, she found solace in taekwondo. “Sport is a miracle; it saved my soul.

Mahdia Sharifi addresses the public