Pope Francis has issued a warning to the sport of cycling over “doping, dishonesty and corruption”.
Speaking at the Annual Congress of the European Cycling Union, the pontiff praised cycling as a discipline which promotes “virtues such as patience, integrity, altruism and team spirit. In road cycling we can see how the whole team works together during races.”
But he added a warning over the ongoing questions of cycling’s moral compass, when “prestige and profit” lead astray.
He told the congress: “[When] sport becomes an end in itself, and the person an instrument at the service of other interests such as prestige and profit, then distortions appear that taint it. I am thinking, he said, of doping, dishonesty, disrespect for oneself and one’s opponents, and corruption.
