Press keeps missing obvious religion news at ’22 World Cup — GetReligion
The feature, which ran on a Sunday during Advent, looked at Qatar’s only Catholic church, located on the outskirts of the capital city Doha — in an area in which the government sanctions eight houses of worship, from Anglican to Eastern Orthodox. This feature, written by John Branch, is one of the rare times when a sports writer left his or her “comfort zone” and ventured outside the bubble of stadiums and press conferences to cover a story.
Here’s the key section, showing why this story matters:
Qatar is a nation deeply rooted in Islam. Calls to prayer can be heard five times a day throughout Doha. World Cup stadiums have prayer rooms for fans, and some staff at the games will stop what they’re doing to kneel in prayer.
But there are only about 300,000 Qatari citizens in Qatar, a country with a population of nearly 3 million. It is a segregated and stratified society, where nearly 90 percent of the people are from somewhere else: the global south, mostly — places like India, Nepal, the Philippines, but also many parts of Africa: Egypt and Kenya, Uganda and Sudan.
They are the laborers, the service workers, the housekeepers. Their treatment, or mistreatment, in doing the dirty work of building this gas-rich nation has been a major story line surrounding this World Cup.
Migrants still work in every corner of the labor market. At the soccer stadiums, they are ushers, janitors, concession sellers, ticket takers. In many ways, they are the public face of Qatar, sprinkled through every visitor’s experience.
The Catholic press has covered stories with similar angles. A News Google search yielded the following results.
ESPN and Fox Sports have, to be blunt, not covered these stories.
Religion and religious traditions help to explain so much about the world and where people come from. At the World Cup, where nationalism is on display in the stands, when players sing their national anthems and in post-game celebrations, you’d think print and television reporters would be more journalism done around obvious, even visible, faith angles.
For Fox, which serves as the official broadcaster of the 2022 World Cup in the United States, the many hours of coverage (both pre-game and post-match) would find the time to address some of these storylines.
Let’s look at Brazil, a five-time World Cup champion and always among the favorites to win it all. It was back in March that the BBC did a feature story under the headline, “Evangelicalism & Brazil: The religious movement that spread through a national team.” This is how the piece opens:
It was derby day in Belo Horizonte, but that wouldn’t change anything. Joao Leite believed he had a mission assigned to him by Jesus Christ: to spread God’s word among other football players.
So that afternoon in December 1982, just like he’d done for every match for the past three years, the Atletico Mineiro goalkeeper randomly approached an opponent before the big game started.
“Jesus loves you and I have a gift for you,” he told Cruzeiro keeper Carlos Gomes as he presented him with a copy of the Bible.
At the time, Gomes found it all a little strange given the circumstances. He even admitted to feeling in some way angry as he was handed the book.
But that initial feeling later changed and he did actually join Leite’s religious movement — Athletes of Christ. He was far from the only convert.
An association of evangelical Christian sportspeople, Athletes of Christ counted some of the most influential people in Brazilian football among its membership.
At their first meeting they were four in number. That would grow to about 7,000 across 60 countries, including high-profile footballers such as 2007 Ballon d’Or winner Kaka and ex-Bayern Munich centre-back Lucio.
In the Amazon series “All or Nothing,” there were five episodes dedicated to a behind-the-scenes look at Brazil’s 2019 run to the Copa America title, the South American championship reserved for national teams. The series, released in January 2020, did not shy away from the players’ faith.
For example, the second episode — “A Team That Plays Together, Pray Together” — revealed the rites of prayer that take place before games and during in team meetings.
Many of the players are evangelicals, reflecting a wider growth of this Protestant religious movement among the Brazilian people in a country that was once mostly Catholic. Some are practicing Catholics, including head coach Adenor Leonardo Bacchi (who is commonly known as Tite).
