Was it right to stop Serie A over the death of Pope Francis?

In the year in which Serie A returned to the pitch on Easter Sunday, no balls rolled on Easter Monday (Pasquetta). A few hours after the first match kicked off and shortly after the news around the world reported the death of Pope Francis, the Italian Football Federation announced the cancellation of all competitions as a sign of mourning for the death of Jorge Mario Bergoglio. “All competitions scheduled for today are suspended, from Serie A to the amateurs,” explained Gabriele Gravina, President of the FIGC. “Italian football is moved to share in the grief of hundreds of millions of people at the passing of His Holiness Pope Francis. He was a great example of Christian charity and dignity in suffering and was always open to the world of sport and football in particular, for which he had a great passion. His human and spiritual closeness to the sick, the poor and the persecuted all over the world,” continued Gravina, ”was his most profound testimony, a beacon of light that will illuminate generations to come. He will forever remain in our hearts as a faithful and football-loving person.”

The decision was recommended by CONI to all affiliated federations, including those of other sports besides football, and then prepared by the FIGC for each category. So here is the announcement of the postponement of four Serie A matches (Torino-Udinese, Cagliari-Fiorentina, Genoa-Lazio and Parma-Juventus), the entire Serie B and many others scheduled for yesterday in the lower and youth leagues. The dates for the catch-up matches: tomorrow, 23 April for Serie A, Monday, 13 May for Serie B.

Series A precedents

Looking back at our country's recent history, this is not the first time this has happened: in 2005, on the anniversary of the death of Giovanni Paolo II, it happened once before; but not in 2022, on the anniversary of the death of Benedetto XVI (partly because of the gap of almost a week to the next round, partly because of the unprecedented position of the Pope Emeritus). Looking backwards, however, there is no particular evidence for this: Paolo VI's death had occurred during the summer break of the championship (August 1978), similar to his successor Giovanni Paolo I (shortly before the first day, but after a very short pontificate) and his predecessor Giovanni XXIII (June 1963). In 2025, when Papa Francesco died on Easter of all days, the tradition was reactivated: Football felt it had to hold on to this moment of institutional mourning once again, whether by law or inertia. And although this decision needs no formal explanation due to its continuity with the past, it is precisely this automatism that raises questions. The most trivial one, which many people asked themselves after the news broke: Why does sport, and football in particular (with all the interests it moves in our country), continue to be halted by the death of a pope? And why is this only happening in Italy?

The gesture has inevitably led to undesirable consequences: Matches have been postponed at the last minute (with the attendant impact on the pitch and logistics), teams have had to slash their calendars even further (at a time when the issue is very tense), commitments and travel have had to be rescheduled for fans (especially those on the road) and insiders (with minimal notice, during holidays). And all this for the top league sides involved, with a midweek game scheduled at the last minute and played tomorrow at an inconvenient time in the afternoon (18:30) to avoid clashing with the Coppa Italia derby (second leg of the semi-final between Inter and Milan, 21:00). The fixture schedule, which was originally designed to fill the Italian holidays, increase attendance in the stadiums and maximise TV viewing figures, has turned into a round that stretches over several days and is sometimes played in an unfavourable part of the week. It falls between a bank holiday weekend and 25 April, which almost sounds mocking.

How the Series A calendar will change

The calendar was, if anything, strangely helpful. Indeed, the teams involved do not include any clubs involved in other competitions, such as Inter and Milan, who played on Saturday, and Bologna and Empoli, who are involved in the other Coppa Italia semi-final, which was confirmed on Thursday evening. That leaves only Fiorentina, who fly to Spain next week to face Betis in the Conference League semi-final. This is part of a tight fixture list with 10 games in 35 days, which has now been condensed even further. Logistically at least, the Serie A clubs have been lucky. In Serie B, on the other hand, things are not looking so good. The symbolic tribute to the Pope has become a not insignificant systemic complication. In fact, all ten matches will be made up on 13 May: a time frame that requires the promotion and relegation races, the determination of the play-off rounds and the scheduling at the end of the year, all in a context with less availability than in the first division.

Apart from the contextual factors that inevitably differ from one environment to another, stopping football in Italy means stopping a system that involves dozens of teams, thousands of employees (inside and outside the stadiums) and millions of fans and television viewers. In fact, it is an industry in which a not insignificant part of the population in our country is directly and indirectly involved and which plays a role in all sectors (e.g. also in the transport and catering industry). And all of this brings us back to the two questions we started with.

Does it make sense to stop Italian football?

It's not about debating whether it's worth it: that would be a cynical and probably disrespectful approach. Nor is it about prioritising or elevating football to a sphere that is not the responsibility of a sports movement. Rather, it is about the question of whether such a drastic decision is really the only possible form of honour. Wouldn't Gravina's words have been enough? Perhaps with a minute's silence on the fields or a less pompous and more spontaneous ritual to emphasise the importance of the honour. Also because Papa Francesco's memorial service took place in the first year that the FIGC decided to play on Easter, following the line of other international leagues and sports.

While in England, Spain, Germany, France and the Netherlands - not to mention the United States with the NFL and NBA “Christmas games” - playing during the festive season is the norm, in Italy Christmas and Easter schedules have always been a point of contention. Cultural heritage has repeatedly proved to be a burden on the freedom of choice of sports institutions and clashes with the new organisational needs of the movement - namely to play and earn more and more money. The conflict between the cultural sphere and sports entertainment is no surprise: for decades, Italian football has maintained the unwritten rule of not organising matches on Easter Sunday. This has been the case since 1978, with very rare exceptions (Perugia-Inter 2004, Reggina-Udinese 2009), which met with harsh criticism from the ecclesiastical world. Cardinal Ennio Antonelli, for example, said at the time that “the god of football imposes himself on every religious holiday", while CEI spokesman Giorgio Constantino added that “games on Easter distract people from the duties of a good Christian”

In 2025, Serie A had decided to break with custom and emancipate itself from all that. Consistently, one could say, with a system that adapts the calendar to the needs of television, that expands the competitions (or not), perhaps by moving them abroad to make them more profitable, and that generally surrenders to the game of budgetary logic. Stopping the Pope's death, a moral decision, seems instead to be a value-based U-turn. This is to make it clear that it is not about respect for the figure of the Pope, but about the form he takes. Stopping football for the Pope's death, shortly after the Easter games have been cleared, is indeed a contradiction that tells us a lot about our country. An age-old reflex that resurfaces unquestioned and seems disconnected from the present. More than an act of respect, in short, an all-Italian custom that nobody wants to question.

What has happened in the rest of the world

Sport has not stopped in any other country, neither yesterday nor in the past, not even in strongly Catholic contexts. For example, it was played in Spain, in Poland, where there was no stopping it in 2005, even though Giovanni Paolo II was a native of Krakow, in France, in Portugal as well as in Germany, England and Holland. And also in the Latin American world (Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Chile), with the exception of Argentinian football, which deserves its own discussion. In Buenos Aires, unlike in the past, the decision was made to honour the Pope with a 24-hour break. A decision rooted in the deep bond between Bergoglio, who was a fan of San Lorenzo among others, and Argentinian football - an environment that has always fulfilled a social and educational function that is difficult to compare with other contexts and is therefore closely linked to the public.

While the suspension in Argentina was natural and due to an exceptional case, in Italy it was perceived as automatic, conventional and almost inevitable. And this raises the question of what justifies such a far-reaching interruption in a secular country when the head of state of another country dies. Certainly, the figure of the Pope in Italy has a much broader significance than the political dimension; the spiritual authority and cultural influence he exerts on citizens, institutions and the country as a whole are historically recognised. Nevertheless, there is no norm that prescribes or suggests that sport should be put on hold. It is done in the name of custom and tradition, but the line between homage and automatism becomes thin when the choice is legitimised only by the consolidation of a practise. And especially when it is divisive in the context it represents.