The Torino 2025 Torch travelled to Vatican City

As a symbol of equality, peace and respect, the “Guarini” Torch of the Torino 2025 FISU World University Games was blessed by Pope Francis to promote its values that characterise the spirit of sports.

The Torch of Torino 2025, the “Guarini” (a name from the architectural concept of concentric hexagons that, on the six levels, rise upward, inspired by the famous Dome of the Chapel of the Holy Shroud of the Torino Cathedral, designed precisely by Guarini), was born from the project of three students of the Torino Polytechnic. It represents core universal values, such as good health and well-being for everyone, quality education, gender equality, and environmental and social sustainability, bringing together young people, university students, and society as a whole.

And to strengthen this universal message, the Torino 2025 FISU World University Games Torch was blessed by Pope Francis in Rome on Wednesday, 12 June, in the presence of a delegation from the Torino 2025 FISU Games Winter Organising Committee. 

Present at the meeting, Organising Committee President Alessandro Sciretti, said: “There will be more than 3,000 university students arriving in Torino in January 2025 from all over the world to take part in the FISU Games. And today’s papal blessing of the Torch of Torino 2025 underlines the truly global scope of this event, which transcends territorial and cultural boundaries to reaffirm the universal spiritual values on which it is based: the relevance of the role of young people in the world, the essential importance of knowledge, loyalty and respect for the person and the rules, which are the founding principles of sport.”

On 20 September 2024, on the occasion of the International Day of University Sport, the “journey of the Torch” will kick-off from the Rector’s Office at the University of Turin. This will be a special edition, in which the FISU Games Torch will leave Torino to present itself to Europe, retracing the history of the Universiade before returning to Piedmont, where students from the different provinces of the region will be ready to welcome it.  

The journey will end where it all began, arriving in Torino on 13 January 2025, to light the brazier of the XXXII FISU World University Games Winter.