The Vatican Will Participate in the Taekwondo World Championships for the First Time: Here Is the Representative and the Specific Discipline

The partnership between Athletica Vaticana and the Italian Taekwondo Federation has been developing for several years. Athletica Vaticana became a member of the world federation in 2021, and the relationship took on an especially visible character in June, when the international taekwondo community was received by Leo XIV in St Peter’s Square.

(ZENIT News / Vatican City, 09.15.2026).- For the first time, the Vatican will have an athlete competing at a world Taekwondo championship, taking a small but significant step in the development of a sporting identity that increasingly connects the Holy See with a much wider mission of encounter, inclusion and peace.

Diego Di Mattia, a 24-year-old member of Athletica Vaticana, will represent the Vatican at the World Taekwondo Championships in Chuncheon, South Korea, where the competition runs from September 16 to 20. He will compete in the forms discipline, making this the first appearance by a Vatican representative at a world championship of this kind.

The scale of the event contrasts sharply with the size of the delegation he represents. Some 1,899 athletes from 85 countries are registered, accompanied by around 2,500 coaches, officials and other delegation members. The United States has the largest team, with 97 athletes.

For Di Mattia, however, the significance of the journey lies less in the size of the tournament than in what it could open up for the future of Vatican sport.

“Participating in the world championships is certainly a great responsibility,” he said. It will be his first experience at this level, after months of training alongside Italy’s national team. “I hope to do well and that this, in the future, can encourage other people to become part of Athletica Vaticana.”

Pope Leo XIV personally encouraged Di Mattia on September 2 before his departure. The gesture gives the Vatican athlete’s participation a dimension beyond an individual sporting challenge: it places a young competitor at the intersection of two worlds that have increasingly found common ground — Catholic institutions and international sport.

The forms discipline is particularly suited to that setting. Unlike combat events in which two competitors face one another, athletes perform sequences of precisely codified movements designed to display technique, concentration and control. At the world championships, competitors face elimination rounds and perform two randomly selected forms from a set of eight. The sequences are revealed on a screen beside the competition area shortly before they are performed.

The event itself is one of the most important on the international calendar, carrying the highest number of ranking points of the season. Five days of competition will take place on five courts at the Songam Sports Town Air Dome in Chuncheon.

Di Mattia has prepared in Rome at the Giulio Onesti Olympic Training Centre, training alongside all 21 members of Italy’s national team. He was coached by Andrea Notaro, the technical director of the Italian team, despite not formally belonging to the national squad.

The Italian athletes, he said, welcomed him warmly and allowed him to train with them without making him feel like an outsider. He expects the same atmosphere in South Korea, where he plans to support the Italian competitors while hoping they will support him in return.

During that encounter, World Taekwondo president Chungwon Choue, accompanied by Italian federation president Angelo Cito, awarded the Pope an honorary 10th Dan, the highest honorary rank in the discipline.

Cito stressed that the gesture was not intended as a sporting prize. It was presented as a symbolic expression of gratitude from a global community of practitioners in 215 countries to a pope who has made peace a central element of his public mission.

The symbolism was reinforced by the presence of seven Syrian refugee girls living in the Azraq refugee camp in Jordan. They had been brought to Rome by the Italian federation to participate in activities with other children during the Kim and Liù tournament held alongside the Rome Grand Prix from June 4 to 7.

For the Vatican, participation in international sport therefore offers a form of public presence quite different from diplomacy or religious ceremony. There is no podium guaranteed, no expectation of a medal and no certainty about how far Di Mattia will advance in Chuncheon. What is already certain is that the Vatican flag will enter a world championship alongside athletes from dozens of countries.

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