Pope Francis has planed to host a celebrity football match in September to promote a diplomatic resolution to the ongoing crisis in the Gaza Strip.
The exhibition game will take place on September 1 at the Olympic Stadium in Rome with “all-star players” like FC Barcelona’s Lionel Messi and the legendary – and contentious - Diego Maradona taking the pitch for the event.
The match will be hosted by the Pupi Foundation, a Buenos Aires-based charity founded by the Argentine soccer player Javier “Pupi” Zanetti, as well as the Pontifical Academy for Social Science.
Besides Messi and Maradona, Brazilian star Neymar is expected to play along with Yossi Benayoun, an Israeli National Team star, along with former Italian star Robert Baggio, a renowned Buddhist, and former French player Zinedine Zidane, who professes Islam.
Maradona posted on his Facebook page that he was excited and honored to be invited by the Pontiff to play for the cause in Rome.
“It is an honor to be invited by Pope #Francis, to participate in the Interreligious Match for Peace, on September 1st, at the Olympic Stadium of Rome,” the Facebook post said.
“More than anything, the goal is to show the coexistence of different religions on the soccer field,” a spokesperson for the Pupi Foundation told Fox News Latino.
He added that the funds raised in the event will go to Scholas Ocurrentes, an organization sponsored by the pope to better education standards across the world, as well as the Pupi Foundation, which focuses on family values and children’s rights.
The idea of the match, officially called Partita per la Pace (Match For Peace), was communicated by Pope Francis to Zanetti when they met in Rome back in April of 2013.
However, the current war between Israel and the pro-Palestinian group Hamas gives an additional impetus to the reason for the game.
