The Church of La Madeleine in central Paris has renamed a side chapel as “Notre Dame des Sportifs” for visiting athletes and fans coming during the year from the start of the World Rugby Cup in France last week until the Summer Olympics and Paralympics, in late July to early September 2024.
The chapel is meant as “a place of listening and prayer” for those who spend so much time training, said Bishop Philippe Marsset, a Paris auxiliary, while inaugurating the chapel on 9 September.
“It becomes like a God! There is not much room for anything else, and they forget this spiritual structure a bit. We just want to make ourselves available to them,” he said.
Next to the altar and two screens with quotes from the Bible and Church documents stands a painting of Saint Mary Magdalene, not only because the building is named after her.
“Mary Magdalene got a gold medal because she ran the fastest to the tomb,” the bishop said with a wink. “We are going to make her our patron saint.”
The church invited anybody to come to pray, talk or have their sports equipment blessed. Many of the hundred attending the opening complied, bringing along bicycles, tennis rackets and sports jerseys.
“This is not magic, it’s a way of saying that everything is linked – what we say, what we believe, what we do,” Bishop Marsset explained before the blessing.
The Parthenon-like La Madeleine is only two blocks away from Place de la Concorde, where a large fanzone has been set up for the Rugby World Cup. A Mass was scheduled in the church before France met Uruguay last Thursday.
The chapel is part of the French Church’s Holy Games project, which among other activities will include the Catholic chaplaincy at the Olympic Village. There will also be prayer halls for other religions there.
Holy Games director Isabelle de Chatellus said there were 7,000 requests for spiritual accompaniment from athletes at the London Olympics in 2012.
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