Last May, three Salesians – Xavier, Pierre and Luc – participated in the French cycling championships for clerics in Arles. A few days later, a true basketball fan – a great supporter of Paris Saint-German – Sister Anne-Flore professed her perpetual vows among the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians. Religious as sports people? Or sport-minded religious? Will it be a recent trend, in line with a society in which 68% of French and Belgians claim to practise a sport (+14% in ten years)?
Not exactly. The followers of Don Bosco have always practised sport and, above all, have always encouraged young people to exercise, play and test themselves.
At Don Bosco, sport is everywhere. Because education is not just teaching. Educating means awakening, stimulating, promoting and helping to grow. For this reason, the Salesian educational system leaves ample room for artistic and sports disciplines. And both the courtyard and the sports fields play an important role in the life of the house.
Some of the young people who attend the Salesian houses in the Saint Francis de Sales Province of France and Southern Belgium (FRB) even make it a profession. The names of the cycling champions Axel Merckx, son of Eddy and himself a victorious professional, who was a pupil of the Salesians in Brussels; or Miguel Indurain, raised by the Salesians in Pamplona; the footballer and current coach of Real Madrid, Carlo Ancellotti, a former pupil of the Salesians in Parma; and the late swimmer Camille Muffat (Nice), riders Didier de Radiguès and Thierry Boutsen (Brussels Woluwé-Saint-Lambert) and the karateka Christophe Pinna (Nice), who trained at the Star Academy, have long been mentioned in the Salesian Family.
Among the young athletes today who "have passed through Don Bosco" are Clément Champoussin, rider of the Arkéa-B&B Hotels cycling team (Nice), Arnaud Gérald, freediving world champion (Marseille), Alizés Lassus, French mountain bike champion (Marseille), Lissandru Bertini, under-21 enduro cycling world champion (Nice)... Or, given that PSG was mentioned at the beginning of this article, Spanish footballer Carlos Soler (Sevilla).
In France, two Salesian associations have even set up facilities to accommodate high-level athletes: the Don Bosco school complex in Nice and the Saint-Louis-Saint-Bruno secondary school in Lyon, which joined the network of Salesian works a few years ago and entered into a partnership with Olympique Lyonnais as early as 1988. Samuel Umtiti, Alexandre Lacazette, Corentin Tolisso, Delphine Cascarino, Maxence Caqueret and many others studied there. In total, 53 partners were signed up with sports clubs, covering 17 different disciplines.
On the other side of the Pyrenees, the Salesians in Spain have been organising the annual "National Day of Salesian Educational Sport" for some years now. This year, the Superior of the Province of St James the Greater, Spain, Fr Fernando García, stressed the importance of Salesian sport as an educational and pastoral tool, recalling the motto: "they play, we educate". He also stressed the role of the Salesian courtyard as a place of evangelisation and encounter and listed the values that sport can transmit: the value of regular work (as opposed to the desire for immediacy), the importance of the rules, the sense of belonging, but also personal development.
This is how the Real Madrid Foundation and the Salesians decided, 15 years ago, to join forces in a common project to help the most disadvantaged children and young people around the world. The result is the "Socio-Sport Schools" project, which takes place in many Salesian schools and which, in addition to sport, provides academic reinforcement, nutritional support and health and psychological care. The collaboration between the two organisations, funded in particular by the organisation of charity matches, has helped more than 20,000 children (children, adolescents and vulnerable young people) in Africa, America and Europe. Started in 2010 in Senegal, with the Tambacounda school, the project continued shortly after in America, with the first socio-sports school in a slum, at the Jacarezinho school, near Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). And since 2012, Europe has also been involved, with the socio-sports schools of Manique and Funchal in Portugal. Today, this joint effort includes 21 projects in 14 countries, helping nearly 4,000 children.
Sport "is involvement and respect for others, it is commitment and determination, team spirit, ability to relate and face defeats," says Fiona May, former Italian long jump world champion and ambassador of the Salesian Mission Office in Turin, "Missioni Don Bosco". On his first missionary trip, the athlete went to Mekanissa, a Salesian mission in the poor neighbourhood of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. There, at the Don Bosco Centre, a home for over 400 street children, Fiona May played with dozens of children from the centre and taught them the basics of long jumping.
How to summarise in a few words what the "Salesian" label can be in this sector? Kim Gevaert, European champion of the 100 and 200 meters in Gothenburg in 2006, and former student of the Don Bosco Institute in Haacht, Belgium, gives us her answer: "When I was a student here, attention was paid to the complete development of a child. The school tried to bring out our talents and we could perfect what interested us most. I saw it clearly. I still remember when I was the weakest link on the volleyball team at school (or so I felt). Then I became one of the best athletes in the national relay, and yet I was very empathetic with those who made mistakes or did not give their best. I never pointed the finger at anyone because I understood how they felt. Well, I acquired this empathy and humility here.”
Nicolas Bogaert and Benoît Deseure
Source : Don Bosco Aujourd'hui
