Clericus Cup

Clericus Cup

Official Clericus Cup Logo
Founded	2007
Region	Vatican City &  Italy
Number of teams	16
Current champions	Collegio Urbano (4th title)
Most successful club(s)	Collegio Urbano (4 titles)
Website	http://www.clericuscup.it
14th Season

The Clericus Cup is an annual association football tournament contested by teams from the Roman Colleges, which are seminaries of the Catholic Church located in Rome. During the fourth season (2010), the tournament involved sixteen schools and fielded players from 65 countries, with the majority coming from Brazil, Italy, Mexico, and the United States.^[1] The players are normally seminarians studying to be Roman Catholic priests. A handful of players are ordained priests. The annual tournament is organized by the Centro Sportivo Italiano [fr; it] (CSI). The league was founded in 2007.

Officially, the goal of the league is to "reinvigorate the tradition of sport in the Christian community"^[2] and has been called the "clerical equivalent of soccer’s World Cup."^[3] In other words, it exists to provide a venue for friendly athletic competition among the thousands of seminarians, representing nearly a hundred countries, who study in Rome. The league is the brainchild of the Cardinal Secretary of State, Tarcisio Bertone, who is an unapologetic football fan.^[4][5] While some press outlets hinted that the Church hoped to offer a brand of football free of football hooliganism, the reality is that play on the field is intensely competitive. The teams that regularly contend for the eight play-off spots are, on the field, fierce rivals.