The
Catholic Weekly
Online
Sydney
2 November 2003
Home
Archive
Subscribe
Links
Contact
Christ’s message holds key, says Cardinal Pell
New cardinal-electors
Cardinal is ‘honoured and delighted’
New managing editor for Catholic Weekly
Wiggles help Vinnies
Change to super laws rejected
Service commemorates Night of broken glass
Don’t leave HSC study to the last minute
Poverty forum call
Italians come clean over holy water
‘Don’t change Medicare’
Hope on Smokey Mountain
New dean of education
‘Give generously’ appeal call
Passion added to atmosphere for players
Mother Teresa
Editorial: Be not afraid
Letters: Biblical errors?
Conversation: Donna Mulhearn, human shield and crusader for kids - Back to Iraq
with ‘lots of love, hugs and care’
The freedom of God
Jesus ‘Lord and healer’
Oath of Fidelity
Sandhills and history
The Italian connection
New deal for deaf high school students
New college Campus
US post
115 years in the sun
Rose Bay victory
Life of the ageing priest
Companions on a Redemptorist’s journey to his final vows
‘Richest year of my life’
Italians come clean over holy water
By Chris Lindsay
Did the Pope really give the Italian World Cup rugby team 500 gallons of holy water to help in its campaign to win the Webb Ellis trophy?
Yes, if you believe the Italian team coach, former All Black winger John Kirwan.
He told journalists after the team’s bruising 19-14 win against Canada that “just before we left Rome the Pope gave us 500 gallons of holy water, so we are doing our recovery in that”.
The remark conjured up visions of the world’s largest font, filled with battered Italian rugby players bathing their bruises in the hope of divine recovery. Unfortunately, it is not so.
The Italian team’s media manager, known only as Giacomo, told The Catholic Weekly that Kirwan had been having a joke with the media.
“How could we carry 500 gallons of water on the plane?” he said. “We will recover without the Pope’s holy water. Instead we are using the ‘holy water’ in the hot water pool at the Institute of Sport in Canberra.”
The Canberra treatment, however, has not proved a success and injured players are still in doubt for the next game.
Real holy water from the Pope may, in fact, have been a better choice.
Perhaps the Pope can manage a miracle cure for the Italian rugby team by having Cardinal Pell bless the Canberra institute’s recovery pool?