COACHES: EDUCATING PEOPLE

Since Monday 14 November 2016 a new book collecting the proceedings of the last year International Sport Seminar is available at the Libreria Editrice Vaticana (the Vatican Bookstore). The Seminar was held in the Vatican by the Pontifical Council for the Laity (now Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life). The book of the proceedings is now available in English, and version in Italian and Spanish will be soon available.

“Coaches: educating people” was the title of the Seminar. It was aimed to develop and better understand the important role of coaches in the formation of sports leaders. The goal was to look at sports not only at the level of a hobby, but also at the professional level. In fact, in many places the youth are beginning to earn money and fame at an early age and the coach is often a respected figure that accompanies them during the entire process of formation.
The title of the Seminar was chosen in continuity with the outcomes of the previous seminars. The goal is to give a complete work which can be used to continue this mission at the level of local Churches.
To that end, the conferences chosen for the Seminar were to reflect the most open perspective of sports, so that, the cultural point of view, the diverse levels, and specialties existing in athletic activities could be seen. Thus, it was done in such a way to have participants with both international and diversified profile. In fact, among the one hundred people participating there were IOC members, sports figures, former coaches, instructors, amateur team coaches, and heads of international organisms or Universities’ professionals. Chaplains from numerous Episcopal Conferences and other people belonging to different Christian denominations took part in the seminar.
The proceedings will be very useful not only to the participants but especially to the sport pastoral ministries all over the world, the dioceses and the directors of sport ministry in the Bishop Conferences. They will help to know more and to develop new tools and ideas useful to evangelization and formation of the athletes through the practice of sport.