She was the entire team

At 8:00 in the morning on June 30, 2022, a young woman named Sara Carnicelli stepped to the start line of the women's half marathon on a boulevard in Oran, Algeria. Thirteen athletes lined up alongside her. What made this particular start line unusual was the flag patch on her racing kit: a vertical stripe of gold and white bearing the papal tiara and crossed keys of Vatican City — the world's smallest sovereign state, entering an international multi-sport competition for the very first time.1

She was the entire team.

Vatican City sits entirely inside Rome. It has a post office, a newspaper, a pharmacy, a railway station with two carriages, and a population that hovers around 800. For most of its modern existence as a sovereign state, it had no official athletics federation, no national sports team, and no presence in the Olympic movement whatsoever.

That changed on January 10, 2019, when Vatican Athletics was founded through a formal agreement between the Vatican and the Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI). 1 The founding membership read like a cast assembled for a film: Swiss Guards, nuns, priests, museum workers, maintenance staff — and, as honorary members, two migrant Muslim Africans living in Rome. The federation was, in the same stroke, the Vatican's first sports team with any legal standing, and its first official sporting association of any kind.

Vatican Athletics is not affiliated with World Athletics, the sport's global governing body. Instead, it operates under the Italian Athletics Federation (FIDAL), a quirk born of geography and necessity — the Vatican is landlocked within Rome, and its athletes train on Italian soil, often in Italian facilities. Carnicelli herself prepared for Oran at the Cecchignola military sports center in Rome, with logistical support from the Centro Sportivo Esercito, because Vatican City does not own adequate athletic training facilities.1

Between 2019 and 2022, the Vatican came agonizingly close to competition several times without quite crossing the threshold.

In May 2019, a Vatican delegation traveled to Budva, Montenegro, for the Games of the Small States of Europe — a multi-sport event designed for tiny nations like San Marino, Liechtenstein, and Andorra. They attended. They watched. They were barred from competing because Vatican City did not yet have a National Olympic Committee, the mandatory entry ticket to official multi-sport participation.1

Plans to compete at the 2021 Games of the Small States of Europe collapsed when COVID-19 forced the entire event's cancellation. The 2022 Mediterranean Games themselves had originally been scheduled for 2021 and were pushed back for the same reason.1

When the invitation to Oran finally arrived — as a guest, not a full member — it was the first door that actually opened.

The Vatican's participation in Oran came with an asterisk. Vatican City attended as a guest nation, which carries a specific meaning in Mediterranean Games protocol: athletes compete, their times are recorded, but no results count toward the official medal tally. The nation scores nothing. It exists in the record books, but in a separate column.

This arrangement suited the Vatican's purposes precisely. Melchor Sánchez de Toca Alameda, the Vatican's undersecretary for the Dicastery for Culture and Education and the delegation's head official, described the goal as participating with "some significance" — something beyond mere athletic competition.1 He drew an explicit parallel with the Holy See's status at the United Nations, where it holds permanent observer standing — present, respected, influential, but not voting, not competing for power.

Pope Francis reinforced the diplomatic dimension. During a Mass held in Oran during the Games, he thanked the organizers for inviting Vatican Athletics and spoke about the role of sport in fostering diplomatic dialogue and interfaith understanding.1 For a papal state whose soft-power toolkit runs through liturgy, diplomacy, and symbol, a long-distance runner on a North African boulevard was, in her own way, an instrument of foreign policy.

The original Vatican delegation for Oran was supposed to include two athletes. Simone Adamoli — son of an employee of the Governor's Palace — had been entered in the men's 400 metres alongside Carnicelli. He withdrew before the Games began, for reasons the Wikipedia article does not specify, leaving the delegation at exactly three people: one athlete, one coach, one official.1

The three of them flew to Algeria with the Italian delegation on a charter flight operated by ITA Airways.

Eligibility for Vatican Athletics is defined narrowly. To wear the papal flag in competition, an athlete must be a Vatican citizen, a priest or seminarian with direct Vatican connections, an employee of the Vatican, or a relative of an employee. Carnicelli qualified through her father, Giancarlo Carnicelli, an administrative employee of the Holy See. (Some sources in the article suggest the connection ran through her mother; the Wikipedia article notes the discrepancy.)1

Before Oran, Carnicelli had already made a kind of unofficial history. At the 2022 Championships of the Small States of Europe, she finished third in the women's 10,000 metres — and then had to hand the bronze medal back. Per an agreement between European Athletics and the Athletic Association of Small States of Europe, non-member nations cannot claim official podium places. The fourth-place finisher, Roberta Schembri of Malta, received the bronze. Carnicelli received an honorary medal instead.1

It was a peculiar form of recognition: you ran fast enough to stand on the podium, but the podium isn't for you.

The women's half marathon at the 2022 Mediterranean Games started and finished at the Miloud Hadefi Stadium in Oran, looping through an urban circuit on city streets. Carnicelli ran the full distance in 1 hour, 17 minutes, and 21 seconds. 1

The gold medal went to Italy's Giovanna Epis, who finished in 1:13:47. Had Vatican City been an official participant rather than a guest, Carnicelli's time would have placed her ninth of thirteen runners — a respectable finish, well inside the field, not a participant-ribbon consolation performance.1

Her result was recorded. It simply wasn't placed.

Carnicelli continued representing Vatican Athletics after Oran. In 2024, she transferred to Imperiali Atletica, an Italian club. The Vatican's presence in small-states athletics continued: at the 2024 Championships of the Small States of Europe, Giuseppe Zapparata ran the men's 110 metres hurdles for the Vatican and unofficially placed third — another honorary performance, another medal that couldn't officially be his.1

Possible Vatican participation at the 2026 Mediterranean Games had been flagged as early as September 2019 by the Holy See Press Office. Whether that participation materializes — whether the Vatican moves from guest to official entrant, from symbolic presence to medal-eligible competitor — remains an open question in the Olympic movement.1

The Vatican's path to the Olympics is genuinely unusual. Without a National Olympic Committee, it cannot participate in the Games. Forming one would require World Athletics affiliation, which would in turn mean navigating a relationship between Holy See sovereignty and international sporting governance — a negotiation with no clear precedent. De Toca's UN-observer analogy captures the apparent preference: a role that confers presence and influence without full institutional membership.

A lone runner finishing ninth, unofficially, in a half marathon on an Algerian boulevard may be the closest thing to a Vatican foreign policy statement that ever crossed a finish line.