RC Celta experienced one of the most significant events of the Centenary this morning, the private audience with Pope Francis in the Vatican. The Celta delegation, led by President Carlos Mouriño and consisting of members of the board of directors, executives, squad and coaching staff of the first team, subscribers and employees, was received by the Pope, a well-known football fan, in an emotional reception in the unique St. Peter’s Basilica.
Carlos Mouriño presented the Supreme Pontiff with a plaque with the club’s shield and the newly released Centenary shirt with the Pontiff’s name on the back. The Pope also received an olive tree from the club, a gift that symbolizes both our city and the club’s Centenary anthem.
Pope Francis gave a moving speech referring to the values of sport, the importance of teamwork, and recalled the union between the Galician and Argentinean people due to immigration from the last century and the special way in which immigrants experience their hobbies, like football, as a way to keep them connected with their people.
To the leaders and footballers of the Real Club Celta de Vigo
Dear brothers and sisters, dear bishop of Vigo, dear Monsignor Carballo:
I am pleased to receive you on the celebration of the first centenary of this sports club. I have often repeated that sport is a reason and an opportunity to rediscover and promote many values of our society and, in this sense, meeting a “Galician” club is for me something that evokes so many experiences that I as an Argentinean lived in my own flesh. If you have noticed, your colors are those of the Immaculate Virgin and also those of the Argentine shirt, almost as if our Mother wanted to interweave between the two shores of this great ocean that more than separating us, has united us so that we do not forget her.
Don Carlos told me in his letter that he too had to cross the Atlantic to start a family; like so many others, he surely contemplated in the distance that white-and-sky-blue flag that waved goodbye from the captaincy of the port of Vigo. And this is the story of many.
