At a celebration of Catholic Education to be held at St Mary’s University College, near London Twickenham on Friday, Pope Benedict XVI will launch a fitting legacy to his well-loved predecessor, Pope John Paul II. 32 children from school years 9 to 11 have been selected from state, independent and special needs schools across the UK as a result of having achieved local or national success in sport or who have excelled against the odds and achieved in the sporting field.
They will make a sporting pledge before the Holy Father to engage in sport and “play with the right spirit, enjoy myself, give of my best, respect others, myself and the rules.”
Recognising the enormous potential within sport to foster healthy values and virtues, the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales wish to move beyond the boundaries of sporting excellence found in Catholic schools to encourage greater engagement with, and participation by, Catholics generally in sport.
They believe that Catholic teaching has much to offer the sporting world, and that sport, when engaged with appropriately, can offer much in the area of human development.
Archbishop Vincent Nichols said on the creation of the Foundation: “With the Olympic Games less than two years away, we have a moment of opportunity and a whole process in which the aspirations of young people, the meanings of habit and routine in their lives, and the whole notion of achieving excellence can begin to be lifted up again.”
“Within the 2012 Games there are seeds for all sorts of good ideas and good initiatives. The John Paul II Foundation for Sport is a venture that I am particularly interested in as it uses sport to try and introduce to young and old alike the importance of health, the dignity of our bodies, the care of physical well-being and its spiritual meaning.”
At a time when sports news fills both the front and back pages of newspapers, it is fitting that the John Paul II Foundation for Sport be established by the Catholic Bishops as a legacy in the England to the forthcoming 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and the life and witness of Pope John Paul II.
He was himself a passionate sportsman and spoke 120 times during his pontificate about sport, insistent that sport should have its own unique celebration during the Great Jubilee Year 2000.
One of his last major acts as Pontiff was to form a Vatican Office for Church and Sport in August 2004.
Since this time, bi-annual global conferences have taken place in Rome to examine the role of the Christian faith within the sporting world.
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