Olympic Games: Bless me Father, for I have committed a foul in the penalty area. The Vatican, long in the business of souls, is now getting into the business of sports. Or more precisely, it is getting into the business of putting the soul back into sports.

The Vatican has set up a department with the stated aim of helping to re-inject fundamental values of fairness, ethics, transparency and legality into sports.

Coinciding with next week's opening of the Olympic Games in Athens, the department, called Church and Sport, has been opened as part of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Laity.

"Every time you pick up the paper you see how urgent it is to promote ethics in sports," said Father Kevin Lixey, the head of the department, the establishment of which was announced yesterday.

"Sports involves every single person. People talk about it in the coffee bars, on the buses, kids practise it," Lixey said. "The Church has to be a part of this world."

A statement announcing the new department said this month's Olympics in Athens are "another clear sign of how much sport has become an important element in the life of our societies". It said the department had become necessary because many tendencies in sport had distanced people from its original ideals.

Since sport had become "one of the nerve centres of contemporary culture" the statement said the 1 billion member Catholic Church should see the world of sports as a fertile ground to spread its evangelical message.

The new department would draw attention to Pope John Paul's speeches and writings on ethics in sports and propose studies on various aspects, including doping, violence and excessive commercialism.