It was to have been a first for the Vatican women’s football team. FC Mariahilf, a Viennese women’s team, had invited the Vatican team to a match in Vienna last weekend to celebrate FC Mariahilf’s twentieth anniversary. It would have been the Vatican team’s first international game abroad.
In the presence of the new Austrian nuncio, Archbishop Pedro Lopez Quintana, both teams attended a Service of the Word and the football pitch was blessed.
Suddenly, in the middle of the Vatican anthem, the teams were called to the sidelines by their coaches and loudspeakers announced that the match had been cancelled.
It turned out that, while the Vatican anthem was being sung, a few members of the Austrian team had pulled up their soccer shirts and exposed pro-abortion slogans that had been painted on their bodies. At the same time banners reading "Football Rules – not Gender Roles" were unfolded.
On Monday, FC Mariahilf published an official apology on Facebook.
“We would like to offer our sincere apologies to the members of the Vatican team and to our guests from near and far for the fact that the game did not take place. The cancellation was at no time planned and we were looking forward to the game. When the anthem rang out, three of our players pulled up their shirts and showed off paintings of ‘pro-choice’ slogans on their bodies.
"This silent protest was meant to point to the Church’s attitude to reproductive self-determination and LGBTIQ rights. The three players organised and carried out the protest on their own. FC Mariahilf was in no way involved,” the apology read.
“Well, if that wasn’t a foul!” the German edition of Vatican News commented. “What remains is the sad fact that a football match, which is meant to demonstrate fair play and the unifying effect of sport, was used for political messages in a framework where it was not possible to react appropriately.”
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