Monks’ World Cup Loyalties Divided

July 9th, 2006 | by: WC Bob | View Comments

Before the semifinal between Germany and Italy, we shared with you’re the Pope’s strategy for supporting each team for a half. That didn’t really work out too well for Germany, but we like to think that it did contribute to an entertaining match. We can only speculate that the Pope will be fully supporting Italy in today’s final, but his holy powers will be competing with the prayers of 600 children monks in India who are fully backing France.

“We have been offering prayers to get a good match and hope the French team wins the cup,” said one of the youngsters.

Not all monks are throwing their robes and prayers behind Zinedine Zidane and the gang. In another part of India some 300 monks at one of Tibetan Buddhism’s holiest monasteries will be praying and cheering for the Azzurri.

“I am praying for Italy’s victory like many of my colleagues here,” said Tenzing Dorji, a 27 year-old monk. “The team has reached the finals after a long gap and (are) playing in a fair manner.”

There aren’t too many Australians who think Italy is playing in a fair manner, but who are we to disagree with a monk.

Finally there is the abbot of the Shaolin Temple who was lucky enough to receive an invite from FIFA head honcho Sepp Blatter to watch the game in person. We’re kind of hoping that he tries to scalp his ticket. We need a little divine intervention to get in to see the game in person.

We’re not praying for either side to win today, but we would like to call upon all of you to put your collective powers together to help deliver an entertaining and memorable World Cup final.