After backlash, Vatican points to Olympic champion Lollobrigida as model of motherhood

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Italian Olympic speedskating champion Francesca Lollobrigida confronted backlash for bringing her energetic 2-three hundred and sixty five days-customary son to interviews after her gold medal wins last month. But on the Vatican on Tuesday (March 17), officials held her up as a model of motherhood and elite sport.

“Francesca’s preference shouldn’t be any longer an evident one,” talked about Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, who heads the Vatican division for culture and training, one day of a press convention on the Vatican. “In her victory, we discover an even time the victory of all ladies and men who command it’s you can imagine.”

Lollobrigida realized she was pregnant with her son, Tommaso, soon after winning silver and bronze medals on the 2022 Frigid climate Olympics in Beijing. While many talked about she would no longer be ready to return to the ice, she persevered practicing after her pregnancy and whereas breastfeeding as she prepared to compete in the 2026 Olympic Video games in Milano Cortina.

“I did no longer stop after they told me I’d no longer discover some other time — and as an alternative, I won even extra,” Lollobrigida talked about on the Vatican press convention.

On Feb. 7, her 35th birthday, Lollobrigida won gold in the 3,000-meter speedskating competition, surroundings a brand sleek Olympic file in the job. On Feb. 12, she won a 2d gold medal in the 5,000-meter hasten. The Contemporary York Occasions referred to her as “Worthy Mother.”

“I wasn’t terrified. I vastly bowled over myself because I won in opposition to myself,” Lollobrigida talked about, pointing to the challenges she confronted as an athlete and as a mother to attain her results, together with sleepless nights and getting unwell from the ailments her son would lift home from daycare. “I made a decision no longer to stop both a family or an Olympic dream.”

But Lollobrigida got backlash online after doing interviews whereas maintaining her spirited son. At the Vatican, she talked about she has accepted the criticism but is sure to unfold her message of being a mother-athlete — in that checklist. She talked about many moms wrote to her to point to pork up and share their struggles with managing motherhood and varied responsibilities.

Tommaso was point out on the press convention and rushed to sit down on his mother’s lap, to the applause of curial officials and the cardinal. The Vatican sports activities crew, Athletica Vaticana, proficient Lollobrigida with a shirt with the papal colors of yellow and white.

“I was smiling one day of the hasten because I was taking part in it — I was doing what I love and did no longer stop,” Lollobrigida talked about.

She talked about her achievements wouldn’t were you can imagine without the pork up of her crew and family, which supported her by the years. “With the lawful pork up, and by being mentally solid, a woman shall be a mother, a worker and an athlete,” she talked about.

Pope Leo XIV wrote a letter addressed to Olympic athletes forward of the open up of the Frigid climate Olympic Video games, stressing that the human factor of sport and competition have to dwell on the heart of the Olympics. He’ll meet with Italian Olympic athletes on April 9 on the Vatican, in an match supposed to handle athletes worldwide and highlight the unifying and peace-constructing dimension of athletics.

“Sport is in actuality on the provider of the happiness of the human individual in all his or her dimensions,” Tolentino de Mendonça talked about, together with, “The ideal medal is joy and hope, and feeling interior oneself that one’s life has succeeded.”