Diego Maradona was devoted to Our Lady

Diego Maradona, the Argentine-born soccer legend, died of a heart attack on November 25, 2020. It is a well-known fact that he was always faithful to his homeland and to soccer, but less well known is that he was a man who kept his promises... even those furthest removed from his reputation as a "bad boy."

A child with fast feet and a head filled with dreams of glory, Diego Maradona arrived in Naples, Italy, in the 1980s. He was a prized athlete and knew his worth. Every Sunday, the whole city would fill the stadium to see him play.

But on March 26, 1989, "El Pibe de Oro" (the golden boy) left his host country for a few days and traveled to Lourdes to keep a promise he had made to his wife Claudia: to go thank the Virgin Mary for the birth of their daughter, Dalma-Lourdes. When he arrived in Lourdes, a crowd closed in on him, preventing him from getting to the grotto. Only his pregnant wife and daughter managed to go in to say a prayer, leaving him to swallow his bitter disappointment on the other side of the Gave river. On the way back to the airport, he was seen carrying two bottles filled with Lourdes water.

The whole world had already witnessed him making signs of the cross and genuflections on soccer fields. Maradona openly loved Our Lady, as do many Latin Americans.

Adapted from: Aleteia