Scottish youth bring faith to the field in the Caritas Cup
Athletes pray before a match organized by the Caritas Cup in Rome, Saturday, June 14, 2025. / Credit: EWTN News
Rome Newsroom, Jun 19, 2025 / 10:36 am (CNA).
Among the many events held across Rome to celebrate the Jubilee of Sport was a June 14 game organized by the Caritas Cup, a tournament founded five years ago by four Scottish high school students to help young Catholics grow in faith through sport.
The goal is not just to score in football, or soccer as it is commonly called in the U.S.
“It’s to bring young people back to the Church and give them an avenue to stay in the Church,” Adam Costello, co-founder of the Caritas Cup, told CNA. “As soon as we finish secondary school in Scotland, people kind of leave. It’s the last sort of chance they’ve got to stay, and I think the Caritas Cup is an avenue for that.”
The Caritas Cup was founded by four young men — Costello, Bailey Gallagher, Daniel Timoney, and Aiden Paterson — who wanted to inspire their peers through faith and sport.
In dioceses and schools across Scotland, the cup organizes local tournaments that bring together young people from Catholic schools and parishes.
Timoney emphasized their grassroots approach: “We are trying to get young people involved in the Church, and especially in Scotland, in the community. Football and sports — especially football and netball — is sort of the way to do that.”
*From local fields to global impact*
Inspired by the values and mission of Caritas — the Catholic Church’s global charity network — the Caritas Cup was founded to put faith into action through sport and service.
Since the beginning, the team has been working closely with the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund (SCIAF) to help support different projects on the local and international level.
“SCIAF is ever-present in the schools in Scotland,” Timoney said. “It’s just such a big household name for Catholics across Scotland. So, we got in touch with them, and [we were able to support] a lot of their projects.”
Beyond bringing together young Catholics to play soccer and netball tournaments in their diocese, the Caritas Cup also raises funds for projects around the world.
“Every year we pick a central fund for a Caritas project,” Costello said. “Previously it’s been to provide water to provide food sanitation to multiple different countries. And this year it’s for the Holy Land appeal and to provide emergency aid to the relief there.”
The name “Caritas Cup” was intentionally chosen to reflect the mission of Caritas Internationalis, and the tournament itself is shaped by that same spirit of faith expressed through concrete acts of charity and community.
“The way that they describe it is very beautiful,” said Rebecca Rathbone, officer for promoting youth leadership at Caritas Internationalis.
The organizers are “putting their faith into action and using something that is fun as a way to raise awareness about the important work that SCIAF does,” she said.
Rathborne emphasized that she believes it is “another real plus of including young people.”
“The work that Caritas does is serious,” Rathbone said, “... but it doesn’t mean that we can’t approach it with a joyful spirit.”
“The challenges that the world is facing change every day and change quickly,” she said, “and something that young people are particularly good at is thinking creatively and being energetic and being hopeful and reminding us that we can work in new ways to address the challenges of today and meet people’s needs today.”
*Growing in human and Christian virtues*
Before the June 14 match in Rome, the players gathered to pray at the Pontifical Scots College.
The event highlighted how sport teaches important Christian values like teamwork, discipline, respect, and perseverance — and how it offers a way to grow together, in both friendship and faith.
In his homily for the jubilee’s closing Mass on the solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity on June 15, Pope Leo XIV emphasized that sport can “help us encounter the Triune God, because it challenges us to relate to others and with others,” both outwardly and inwardly.
“Sport, especially team sports, teaches the value of cooperating, working together, and sharing,” Pope Leo said. “These, as we said, are at the very heart of God’s own life. Sport can thus become an important means of reconciliation and encounter.”
Pope Leo stressed that sport “also teaches us how to lose” and so opens our hearts to hope.
The pontiff recalled the “straightforward and luminous life” of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, who taught us that “just as no one is born a champion, no one is born a saint” and that “it is daily training in love that brings us closer to final victory.”
Costello emphasized that soccer is a perfect metaphor for the spiritual life in that regard: “We have failures in sport but also failures in faith [and at] times we need to get back up again.”
*Building a supportive community*
“There are people here that, myself included, had fallen away from the Church,” Timoney said at the recent match in Rome.
“But this has brought us back into it,” he said. “We’ll go to Mass and it’s just fantastic doing it together.”
Costello also noted what he believes is “the beauty” of the Caritas Cup: “You’re not on your own. And it’s the same for faith. There are always people there. And we want to be those people, for anyone to come to.”
From the way the event of the day unfolds — with prayer, teamwork, and a shared spirit of joy — it’s clear that the goal is not merely to play.
“I think what’s important for us is that we’re not trying to make faith cool,” Costello said. “We just want to show people that it’s not something to be embarrassed about.”
“So, this is a way for young men and young women to show their faith,” he said. “Playing football, playing netball is not ‘what we want.’ All we want is people actively involved in the Church, actively involved in Caritas. In the end it’s much bigger than just the game of football.”