St Peter's Cricket Club unveils tour with charity match against Church of England

(Vatican Radio) A press conference took place at the Pontifical Council for Culture on Monday morning, presenting the first tour to England of the St Peter’s Cricket Club. The Tour of Light, as it’s being called, will culminate in a charity match against a Church of England side in Canterbury on September 19th. Proceeds from the tour will go to support the Vatican-based ecumenical and interfaith Global Freedom Network which is working to combat slavery and human trafficking.

The cricket tour begins on September 12th and includes a number of warm up matches, including one in Brighton on the south coast and one against a team drawn from the Royal Household at Windsor Castle, an official residence of Queen Elizabeth II.

St Peter’s XI is made up largely of Indian, Pakistani and Sri Lankan seminarians, most of whom are training for the priesthood at the Maria Mater Ecclesiae college here in Rome. Fr Eamonn O’Higgins is in charge of spiritual formation at the college and he’s also manager of St Peter’s Cricket Club. Philippa Hitchen caught up with him just after the press conference to find out more about the team and about this rather unusual sporting initiative for his seminarians:

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