With an exciting tribute to Diego Armando Maradona it was played this Monday November 14 in Rome onwards peace festival, organized by the Scholas Ocurrentes Foundation, which was attended by five of Diego’s children, his four sisters and Lalo, who also played in the match. Pope Francis also left a message for those present at the Olympic stadium.
Before the match, the host of the event thanked the presence of the whole Maradona family and those present: Jana, Diego Fernando, Diego Junior, Dalma and Gianinna, five of the children of D10S, of Raúl Lalo Maradona, and of the four sisters, Rita, Ana, Claudia and Elsa. A hologram of the Argentine star was projected at halftime as the band Opus performed the classic live “Life is Life”, soundtrack of a viral video of the footballer during the warm up at Napoli before a clash with Bayer Munich. In addition, a video featuring images of Diez from his early days as a footballer was shown.
But the most moving moment was at the end, when a hologram and Diego’s voice appeared in the sky over Rome: “I’m looking at you from up here, I thank you very much for being here, I support Pope Francis and Scholas, because I want all the boys have the same chances.”
Also at half-time there was a message from Pope Francis, who did not go to the stadium due to health problems but the hologram technique was used again. “Playing for the mere fact of playing. How much does this earn? No, playing for free, priceless, is the joy of being free, the joy of being able to pass, look, move forward and all with a rag ball”, he relaunched in a first moment and added: “The rag ball tells me a lot because as a boy I always played with the rag ball. Sometimes when someone who had worn the number 5, we played with each other”, recalled the pontiff. And finally he exhorted the players to “play, not do business, play by recovering the amateur, free dimension of the game every day”.
It was the third edition of the Festival for Peace, organized by Scholas Ocurrentes, the foundation managed by the Argentines José María del Corral and Enrique Palmeyro. In addition to Lalo Maradona, the meeting was attended by the Brazilian Ronaldinho, the Italian Ciro Immobile, the Bulgarian Hristo Stoichkov and the Croatian Ivan Rakitic; the German Miroslav Klose, the Italians Gianluigi Buffon and Ciro Ferrara and the Argentines Pablo Zabaleta, Alejandro Domínguez and Claudio Paul Caniggia, among others.
The blue team, in which Diego’s brother played, won 4-3. After the end of the match, Diego’s five sons took to the field and handed the cup to the winners.
Prior to the match, Pope Francis held several private audiences. In one were the nearly 50 footballers who participated in the movement, which also had the presence of the first lady Fabiola Yañez and the authorities of Aerolíneas Argentinas; in another only the children of Diego; and a third with the sisters and Lalo.
Scholas was born in 2013 as a pontifical foundation in the context of a match played by the men’s soccer teams of Argentina and Italy, during which Francis gave captains Lionel Messi an “olive tree of peace” to be planted as a symbol of the meeting and thus inaugurate a tradition that has already traveled the five continents. On 1 September 2014 Diego Maradona was promoter and captain of the Scholas team, in the first “Partido por la Paz”, which the Fundación Pupi (led by Javier Zanetti) won 6-3. El Diez also participated in the second match, played on October 12, 2016.
Present in 190 countries, and with its offices in cities such as Maputo, Tokyo, Bucharest and Port-au-Prince, Scholas this year has become a “world movement of the faithful” by decree of Pope Francis in recognition of the work with which the institution connects more than half a million schools worldwide.
Source: Clarin
