PARIS (OSV News) ─ With Paralympic Games closing in Paris Sept. 8, more than a monthlong Olympic adventure is over. But the spirit of the Games will resonate in the French Catholic Church for much longer -- thanks to the disabled who participated in church initiatives with great enthusiasm.
The Aug. 28-Sept. 8 Paralympic Games brought together Christian associations that care for people with disabilities around "welcome days" held in Paris' parishes.
"We had a wonderful experience of shared joy," Isabelle de Chatellus, director of the "Holy Games" project, told OSV News. The Holy Games initiative offered tickets to the disabled to attend the Paralympic competitions, with 630 places reserved by the church for this purpose.
One of the associations involved was L'Arche, an international organization that cares for people with intellectual disabilities. In Paris, 78 of its mentally disabled members were selected to be among the 2,400 disabled volunteers who provided support at the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Four of them even carried the Olympic flame.
Other L'Arche volunteers were involved in Holy Games. On Aug. 30, they welcomed people with disabilities to the Notre-Dame-de-la-Salette Church. In this modern, round, rough-cast concrete church, they all spent a day of hospitality and learned to play para-table tennis.
The following day, the disabled were invited to the Saint-Esprit Church. Some of them were able to attend Paralympic competitions during the day, in the nearby Bercy Arena sports.
"Sport and faith go well together," Father Arnaud Duban, the parish priest, told OSV News. He was one of the chaplains on duty in the Olympic Village during the Games. He is a sportsman who has run the Paris Marathon 11 times.
"Many aspects of the sport combine well with faith," he said. "It is about surpassing oneself, inventiveness, solidarity and mutual aid, in a fraternal climate, and even asceticism and a dimension of sacrifice with a view to a greater good. It is no longer fashionable to scourge oneself to atone for one's sins! But the discipline imposed by sport is also a way of taming the body to achieve a goal."
For Chatellus, one of the highlights of this period was an encounter with blind people. On Sept. 2, the Voir Ensemble Christian association for the blind and visually impaired organized a day of meetings and a blind football match at Saint-Pierre du Gros Caillou Church, close to the Eiffel Tower. "The conversations I had that day with those blind people were very rich," she said. "People who cannot see develop a very deep inner life."
Part of the entertainment Sept. 5 was provided by volunteers from the Simon de Cyrène Association at the Church of St. Augustin. The association organizes houses in France where able-bodied and disabled people live together. Some of the disabled participants were able to watch the para-fencing events, with wheelchair athletes, held at the nearby Grand Palais. Everyone listened to the testimonials of top athletes.
Among them was Laurence Durand, a former military paratrooper who was left a paraplegic eight years ago following an accident. She also has problems with hearing and is suffering from lung cancer. She is a four-time French champion in relative flight parachuting. She jumps into free-fall with a teammate, with whom she performs compulsory figures in record time.
She was hoping to take part in the Paralympic Games. "Unfortunately, parachuting was not selected for these Games," she explained. "So I am taking part, but as a volunteer," she said. Her role was to be a delegation's driver, thanks to an adapted car.
Durand had prepared the St. Augustine Holy Games day with volunteers from the Office Chrétien des Personnes Handicapés, or Christian Office of People with Disabilities, which supports the families of disabled people.
She had brought along other athletes who, like her, are involved in the volunteer activities, helping disabled sportspeople.
"My challenge is to stay on my feet, to put off the time when I will have to use a wheelchair," Aurélie Roisin, one of them, said. She parachutes despite suffering from a genetic and degenerative disease.
"Don't limit your challenges, but challenge your limits!" Véronique Prouteau, another volunteer, said. A multi-sport athlete, she lost the ability to move her right leg in a mountain accident, but has since won numerous French championships in para-canoeing and tandem skydiving.
"My best memories are not the medals, but meeting other para-athletes," Prouteau said.
For Chatellus, meeting others was the greatest source of joy throughout the Games. "Having been able to bring together, in a spirit of fraternity, people of all nationalities, able-bodied, frail, disabled or in precarious situations, has been the greatest strength of these two months," she said. "The real light comes from the most vulnerable," she said.
They were the special guests of the closing Mass of the Holy Games Sept. 8, in the little Church of Saint-Ouen, in Saint-Denis, just a few steps from the Olympic Village.
"This is where the athletes came to pray during the Games," Chatellus recalled.
With the Olympics over, "we need to look ahead," she said. "The greatest challenge now facing us is to make this joy resonate, to be able to pass it on. ... There is hope to pass on beyond these Games, for France and for the world."
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Caroline de Sury writes for OSV News from Paris.
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