- 101) "GUYS, YOU HAVE TO BE REAL PLAYERS IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST"

- 101) "guys, you have to be real players in the name of jesus christ"

Young people and sport: an educational challenge

 

Dear guys,

first of all I want to express my delight for your attendance to this football tournament. In fact, last statistics show that in Italy a lot of young people do not play any sport. In Europe, Sweden and Denmark are the countries with the highest percentage of people devoted to sport. The Netherlands are on the third place. Italy is just tail-end, but Romania and Greece come first.

On the other hand, nowadays sports world is losing credibility. Mass media relate impressive doping episodes, self-profit, fixed championships and crude violence in the stadia. In this way, it seems that sports world is regulated by self-interest, consumarism and show business, and there are not shared qualities.

In this situation, it is important to recognize and reconfirm educational value of sport. The verb "to educate" comes from Latin verb e-ducere that means to highlight everybody's qualities and to create a new person. Sport promotes a system of values that are strictly connected with educational ones. such as: the feeling to belong to a community, the importance of the individual and of the group within a team, the partecipation to a social reality with its rules that people have to know and put in practice. Playing football or any other kind of sport presumes the learning and respect of game rules, and the adaptation of both personal and team behaviour on the base of shared values.

Carlo Nesti recently published a book entitled My coach is called Jesus (2014), in which he underlines the importance of Christian values. Jesus asks us to be His followers and to "play in His team": in order to do it, we have to respect "game rules". In the First Letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul writes: "Every man who strives in the game exercises self-control in all things. Now they do it to receive a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible" (1Cor 9,25). So, it is necessary to toughen yourself up in order to face every kind of situation in your life. Dear guys, you have to be real players in the name of Jesus Christ!

I wish you that the attendance to this event is full of great sports and human victories.

 

Vito Angiuli

Bishop of Ugento-Santa Maria di Leuca diocese



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Torneo carnevale di Gallipoli - Coppa Santa Maria di Leuca
ASD Capo di Leuca I-73030 SANTA MARIA DI LEUCA (Lecce) Lungomare Colombo, 61 - C.F./P.iva 04422200750 Matricola FIGC 933909 Iscrizione Registro CONI 160426

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