Pope takes to pitch for sporting preach

John Paul II takes to the pitch

ROME, Italy -- Pope John Paul, a soccer player in his youth, has returned to the pitch to tell the sporting world not to lose its soul in the search for records and glory.

A 70,000 crowd in Rome's Olympic Stadium on Sunday greeted the Pope, once known as "God's Athlete" because of the pace of his papacy, with a huge roar as he entered the stadium.

He was driven around the edge of the pitch in a black Mercedes before donning brilliant green vestments and starting a mass marking the jubilee day for sports as part of the Catholic Church's Holy Year events.

It was a nostalgic moment for the Pope, who played in goal in a mixed Catholic-Jewish team in his hometown of Wadowice, Poland, before World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust forever changed his life and those of his schoolmates.

At the stadium, athletes representing the five continents lit an Olympic-style flame and the Pope smiled as several of the five white doves released into the crowd found a perch on a huge bronze cross above the altar.

The Pope later watched an exhibition match in his honour pitting Italian soccer stars against a selection of foreigners who play for Italian teams. It ended 0-0.

At the end of the match, footballers came up to the podium to greet him individually, including Italian soccer legend Roberto Baggio, who is a convert to Buddhism.

In his homily during the mass, the Pope referred to his own past as a sportsman.

"As I look at you gathered in such a nice, orderly way in this stadium many memories linked to sporting experiences in my life return to my mind," he said.

"This is the appropriate time to give thanks to God for the gift of sport, in which man can exercise body, intelligence, and will power while recognising that all these are gifts of the creator," he said.

The Pope said the year 2000 should be an occasion for the world of sport to make "an examination of conscience."

The world of sport had to ask forgiveness for deviations and transgressions from sporting ethics, the Pope said following welcoming addresses from IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch and Antonio Rossi, gold medallist for kayaking at the Sydney and Atlanta Olympics.

Sport was not a search for personal glory but a wonderful vehicle to help free the world of poverty and intolerance, he said.

Addressing a crowd that also included top footballers including Italy's Alessandro Del Piero, France's Zinedine Zidane and Argentina's Gabriel Batistuta, the Pope implied that money, fame and fans were not everything in sport.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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