Because sport and faith share common values ​​and because the Games that are opening are an opportunity to bear witness to the joy and "strength" of Christ, the Jesuits are mobilizing before and during the event: presence of chaplains in the Olympic village, exhibition, spiritual journeys, reviews... A tour of this mobilization.

 The two Jesuit communities of Saint-Denis in the starting blocks

" We will spend the summer with the residents who will not be able to afford to leave or pay for entry to the stadium, and experience the games together ," rejoices Fr. Jacques Enjalbert SJ, chaplain of the Maison d'église de Saint-Paul.

Two Jesuits, Frs. Jacques Enjalbert and Grégoire Catta, as well as three Xavier sisters, Véronique Rouquet, Juliette Ploquin and Gudrun Steiss, will be part of the team of Catholic chaplains at the interdenominational center of the athletes' village . They will be available to athletes from all over the world for a warm welcome, fraternal support and spiritual listening, both before and after the events, and will also be able to pray with them. Near the Olympic village, in the Saint-Ouen-le-Vieux church, they will take turns, with diocesan priests, to celebrate a daily mass for them.

As part of the Holy Games, the Jesuits will contribute to the proposals of the diocese of Saint-Denis by welcoming supporters and tourists in the two churches they run : Saint-Denys de l'Estrée and Saint-Paul de la Plaine.

Located a stone's throw from the Stade de France and the new Aquatic Centre, the Saint-Paul de la Plaine church house will aim to link sport, art and spirituality through various initiatives:

A photography exhibition from June 30 to September 18 on the theme of Body & Soul. Created by photographer Manuel Lagos Cid and journalist-videographer Benjamin Le Souëf, it will illustrate how the Christian faith sheds light on the relationship to the body and to sports practice through six themes. For each, a central text panel, bilingual French-English, will be framed by portraits of neighborhood residents evoking, in a short video, the way in which the experience of sport resonates with their life and faith journeys.

This exhibition was designed in partnership with a spiritual retreat to be experienced as a family offered by the Jesuits (see box) . It will also be visible at the Saint-Denys de l'Estrée church, in the center of Saint-Denis, and at the Saint-Ferréol church, a Jesuit sanctuary on the Old Port in Marseille where the Olympic sailing events and some football matches will take place.

Finally, a copy of "Pugilist ", a sculpture by Paul Landowski made for the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris, which represents a competitive boxer, will be exhibited in front of the church. Another "body and soul" fighter will face him: "End of game", a sculpture by Théophile Stein from the Volonté 93 collective in Saint-Ouen. In the church itself, the installation "l'habitant", by Thibaut Lucas from the Push collective in Aubervilliers, will enter into dialogue with the liturgical space.

Visits and discovery of heritage

Also in Saint-Denis, the association "Pierres Vivantes", an initiative launched by an Italian Jesuit in 2008, will organize an international camp during the first ten days of the games. The young participants will show visitors around the Saint-Denis basilica and raise awareness of the richness of the Christian mystery through art and architecture. During the second part of the games, a camp led by Fr. Pierre Alexandre Collomb SJ and Fr. Manuel Grandin SJ, and made up jointly of young people from the Magis network and the diocese of Saint-Denis, will take over and welcome tourists and pilgrims to this high place of art, history and faith.

Body and soul, a spiritual training to experience as a family

> Booklets and registration: Body & Soul Course

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