Pope Greets Pro Recco Water Polo Team 1913

11 September, 2026

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Jim Fair

Leo XIV

22 April, 2021

2 min

Pope Greets Pro Recco Water Polo Team 1913

Team is at the Top of the Global Sport

This morning the Holy Father received in audience the Pro Recco Water Polo Team 1913 and expressed to them the off-the-cuff greeting we translate below.

A.S.D. Pro Recco (Official name: Associazione Sportiva Dilettantistica Pro Recco) is an Italian water polo club from Recco, in Liguria. It currently plays in Serie A1.

Pro Recco is considered the most successful club in men’s water polo. In men’s domestic water polo, the club has won a record 47 trophies: a record 33 Serie A1 titles, a record 14 Coppa Italia. In men’s LEN European competitions, Pro Recco has won a record 14 trophies: a record 8 LEN Champions League titles, a record 6 LEN Super Cups. The club has also won 1 Adriatic League title.

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The Holy Father’s Greeting

I welcome you and thank you for this visit! Thank you so much!

Your sport, water polo, is not easy, but it is interesting. Discipline is necessary to go forward. I repeat myself when I speak with sportspeople. I say two things.

The first thing is teamwork. In sport, a sportsman’s greatest defeat is to work, to play alone, as we say in Argentina: “morfarse la pelota” [to scoff the ball], when the ball is only for me. It’s “to eat the ball.” This isn’t right; this destroys. <Play> always as a team.

And the second thing: never lose the amateur dimension, which is the “mystique of sport,” that bit of the amateur, which one must always be. Don’t lose it because the mystique comes from there. These are the two things I always say: teamwork and the amateur dimension.

And go forward! Courage! Thank you for the visit. I like to greet you. I will bless you all, asking God to accompany you, to bless you, and led you forward in your life.

[Blessing]

And thank you! Thank you so much!

[Original text: Italian] [Exaudi’s translation by Virginia M. Forrester

Jim Fair

Jim Fair has spent the past two decades as a communicator for Catholic organizations. He is a convert to the Catholic faith and is grateful to his wife, Charmaine, for her continuing efforts to save his soul. They have a son and daughter, both happily married, and four grandchildren. Before devoting his life full-time to things Catholic, Jim enjoyed a 23-year career in various communications roles for large corporations. Before that, he worked as a newspaper reporter, photographer, and editor. He has served as president of the Chicago Public Relations Forum, chairman of the American Petroleum Institute General Committee on Communications, and a fellow of Greater Leadership Chicago. He was a member of the founding committee of the chemical industry’s Responsible Care Program. Jim is an active member of St. John Vianney Parish in Northlake, Illinois, where he chairs the finance council.