Behind the sports betting, a project full of meaning on this Holy Thursday for these classes: giving substance to the theme “Faith and Justice” which animates the Jesuit schools in French-speaking Belgium this year. Students from the Saint François Xavier College (SFXun) and the Saint François Xavier Institute (SFXdeux) will join the Saint Benoît Saint Servais College in Liège, over a 35-kilometer route. The race for teams of young people aged 15 to 17 will be enriched with new participants throughout the circuit. The youngest, aged 12 to 14, will set off on another route in the streets of Verviers. No less than 500 young people are expected on the starting line!

All sponsored in order to collect donations, the athletes chose to support the ABSL Sit Run Pressé , an association which supports people with reduced mobility during jogging, marathons and half-marathons. Father Thierry Dobbelstein, Provincial, will put on his sneakers to join the effort.

At the end of the day, he will bless the new chapel of the Saint Francis Xavier Institute (SFXdeux). “  As the school no longer has a chapel, our wish was to recreate a space of interiority. During the renovation of the 3rd floor of the school, we chose a location spacious enough to create a space where all the students of the establishment could feel welcomed, whatever their religious beliefs, while highlighting the "the school's own identity, its Catholic roots and its specific link with the Society of Jesus  ", explains Laetitia Daems, director of the secondary school. The stained glass windows, made by two craftsmen from the region, beautifully illustrate the words of Saint Ignatius, at the heart of the school's project: “En todo, amar y servir” .

In other Jesuit schools, such as Matteo Ricci in Brussels or Sacré-Cœur in Charleroi, the races will take place as part of physical education lessons. Several schools have also planned a bowl of rice on Good Friday for the benefit of solidarity associations, notably the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS).

Let's support the initiative of all these schoolchildren who are committed to a better world by following, in real time, the odometer on: https://coceje.be/courir-pour-le-monde/