Pope asks FIFA to help favelas in Rio

THE Pope met the head of FIFA and members of the Italian and Argentine national rugby teams on Friday.

He told the rugby players ahead of yesterday’s Test that theirs was a ‘‘tough’’ sport but one without violence, where individual and team greatness complemented one another.

He also met with FIFA president Joseph Blatter.

‘‘We spoke the same language and it was language of football,’’ Blatter said.

‘‘It was really a meeting between two sportsmen and two football fans.’’

Blatter said he responded to the Pope’s request for FIFA to help the favelas, or slums, of Rio de Janeiro during the 2014 World Cup, with a promise to ‘‘do what we can’’, adding that ‘‘we cannot do everything’’.

The two also unwittingly wound up confronting the relative strength in the numbers of active participants in their institutions, with those involved in football, including players and their families, slightly outnumbering Roman Catholics worldwide.

‘‘We have 1.2 billion people and (the Pope) said, ‘ I have no more than one billion’,’’ Blatter said with a laugh.

The soccer- mad Pope, a longtime member of his beloved San Lorenzo club in Buenos Aires, has amassed an impressive collection of soccer jerseys as gifts from visiting teams and players.