The annual orators’ festival promoted by the Diocese of Foligno will be inspired by the next Olympic Games in Paris. Six hundred, in total, children and young people, between 6 and 13 years old, who on Tuesday 25 June will meet in the sports facilities of Santo Pietro for a day of sport. Organized through the Pastoral Office of the Coordination of Parish Oratories in collaboration with the city section of the Italian Sports Centre, what has been renamed the Oratories Olympics will have the title “The sport that unites us”.
On the front line, in addition to the children and young people of the parish oratories, also animators, educators and parish priests, with the aim of enhancing sport and its social, educational, brotherhood and peace values. The young male and female athletes will try their hand at various sporting disciplines: from athletics to football, from swimming to minivolley, from minibasketball to dodgeball and up to human table football. All of this, as mentioned, in the city sports spaces made available such as the PalaPaternesi, the “Blasone”, the municipal swimming pool, the Vis Foligno court and the basketball court of the church of San Paolo.
The meeting is scheduled for 8am, when the delegations of speakers will enter the athletics track of the Foligno stadium. Following, at 8.30, the opening ceremony with the singing of the Italian anthem and the lighting of the “Olympic fire”. Then, at 9 am, the greeting of the bishop, Monsignor Domenico Sorrentino, and the institutions present. The various sports competitions will then begin and will conclude from 11.30am at the Palasport, which will host the final party and the various awards ceremonies for the occasion.
The annual day dedicated to speakers will continue, however, also in the afternoon. At 5pm, in fact, children and young people will meet together with entertainers and educators in Piazza Matteotti where they will be involved in an orienteering activity, a sport aimed at rewarding those who manage to explore an area safely, in this case to discover some places significant in the historic center of the city of Foligno.
Sponsored by the Municipality of Foligno, the festival will be made possible thanks to the involvement and synergy with the departments for sport and social services, the availability of some entities that manage the sports spaces (Foligno Calcio Ssd, Asd Vis Foligno, Azzurra cooperative society, Ariel social cooperative) and the collaboration of some sports clubs (Foligno Volley, Umbria Basket School of Foligno, Educate with Movement, All’etica Winner Foligno, Intervolley Foligno).
