via Vatican News:

The Holy Father also underscored the relationship between the Church and the world of sport, which has been cultivated with the awareness that “both, in different ways, are at the service of the integral growth of the person and can offer a valuable contribution to our society.”…

“Two things are important: being united and having a goal,” the Pope said, adding that in this sense, sports become “a medicine for the individualism of our societies,” which sometimes creates isolated, sad individuals incapable of being “team players” and of “cultivating a passion for good ideals.”

Commitment to sports, the Pope continued, reminds us of “the value of fraternity, which is also at the heart of the Gospel.”…

Speaking further, he noted that discipline is not only physical, but also internal, as it requires “physical exercise, constancy, attention to an orderly life in schedules and nutrition, as well as rest alternated with the fatigue of training.”

This discipline, the Pope continued, “is a school of formation and education,” especially for young people, as, in the words of St. Ignatius of Loyola, it helps “put one’s life in order”.

At the same time, it “is not meant to make us rigid, but to make us responsible: for ourselves, for the things entrusted to us, for others, for life in general.”