“If it is true that at the end of this World Cup, only one team will raise the Winner’s Cup, we must learn the lessons that sport teaches us: then we will all be winners strengthening the ties that bind us together,” Pope Francis said in his video message on the occasion of the World Cup 2014. A culture of defeat for a new culture of victory, was also the provocative title of a gathering of Sportmeet, a worldwide network of sportspeople and sports operators, to whom Chiara Lubich addressed these words:  “In the Christian mentality, the one who loses knows the value of suffering and defeat because the Son of God has given them value. This person can still experience the deeper joy that comes from having given; given of him or herself during training, or in the relationships established in building up the team, in doing his or her very best in front of the crowds. True inner joy is born only from self-giving, from love. It is a more limpid, pure joy for those who win (if they have striven and won out of love) and for those who lose (if they too have striven and lost out of love). Then sport retains its authentic seal and will be elevated to its true social status. It can then contribute to regenerating humanity in our over-stressed world, to being an element that brings people together, one of brotherhood and peace among peoples and nations. In ancient Greece, during the Olympics, a moratorium was declared on all wars. Let’s not lag behind in comparison to then!” Chiara Lubich, 10 September 2005, message to the Third International Sportmeet Congress