Run So As To Win | Gelato Cup 2022

This year, bets were high and competition fierce as Rome Experience alumnus and winner of the 2014 Circle the Vatican Race, Fr. Jacob Willig, returned after an eight year hiatus to vie for the Gelato Cup. His record was narrowly beat by our 2022 champion: Augustine Reimers of the Diocese of Lincoln.

Congratulations, Augustine!

The Circle the Vatican Race was founded when Fr. Eric Nielsen, Program Director of The Rome Experience, challenged the seminarians to run the full-length of the arms of St. Peter’s Square. The seminarians gladly accepted the challenge and launched what has become an annual tradition.

The Directory for the Ministry and Life of Priests states that “it is necessary for the young cleric to grow in a spiritual environment of true fraternity and thoughtfulness, which becomes manifest in personal attention as well for physical health”; this race has become a fun way for the seminarians to stay physically active as well as to bond with their classmates.

Best of all — the winner of the race wins a gelato of his choice served in a special trophy. His name will be engraved on a plaque among the winners of past races.

Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run so as to win it. Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.

1 Corinthians 9:24-27