By Caroline de Sury

PARIS (OSV News) — The multifaith center that came to life in the Olympic Village with the July 26 opening of the Olympic Games has a real champion overseeing it.

Father Jason Nioka is a former judoka who is now championing the faith as he oversees a team of 40 Catholic chaplains — priests, religious, and laypeople — who take turns welcoming the athletes in Saint-Denis, north of Paris.

Born in France to a family originally from Congo, Father Nioka is 28 and was ordained only a month before the Games started, on June 23, at St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Meaux, in a diocese bearing the same name east of Paris, where he grew up.

Raised in a large urban area parish not far from the Disney World theme park, now-Father Nioka was chosen to prepare and coordinate the hosting of the Olympic Games by the Catholic Church of France after his ordination as a deacon in 2023.

The choice was not accidental. Father Nioka grew up changing the color of his belts for his judoka outfit as he rose through the ranks of an Olympic classic. “I started judo at the age of 3,” he told OSV News. “I then practiced it intensively. I followed a special school curriculum.”

Father Nioka said he grew up in a Catholic family, but practicing the faith has not always been fervent. 

“For a while, my parents stopped going to Mass. But then my mother pulled herself together. Faith was very important to her,” he explained. “She had received (her faith) from her parents. She realized that it was very important to pass it on to us. So the whole family went back to church, with fervor.”

Dubbed “judoka priest” by the media prior to the Olympics, Father Nioka said that for him, “sport was an extension of the values I was learning at home and in church.”

Sport and faith share common values, he said. “Surpassing oneself, modesty, politeness, self-control, and sharing are all part of the judo philosophy. It has a very strong moral code, with solid values.”

“We used to go on pilgrimage to Lourdes with our family every year,” Father Nioka said, recalling that it was in the famous French Marian sanctuary where “when I was 13 … something very important happened to me. For the first time, I felt a deep inner peace. Something has been given to me, in my life of faith.”

In the years that followed, he said, “judo became more and more important” to him.

“I had a timed schedule between studies, training, and competitions. But I also felt very deeply the need to pray, and to read the Bible. I really needed to do that. It was essential nourishment for me,” he said.

Judo is a prestigious and popular sport in France. Founded in 1946, the French Federation of Judo and Associated Disciplines now has 530,000 members in 5,200 affiliated clubs. A competitive sport, judo has won 52 world championship titles, 48 Olympic medals, including 16 golds, and 15 Paralympic medals, including four golds.

While studying and training at the prestigious Pôle France judo school in Strasbourg, young Jason took the time to pray and read the Bible. He then did the same in England, where he spent a year, again as part of his judo training. He shared his faith with his friends and prayed for them. “I wanted to put God first,” he explained.

Little by little, it became clear to him that his prayer life had to take priority. At age 21, he decided to enter the seminary. There, he put aside his life as a judoka for the first few years.

“It was not compatible at first,” he explained. “But I took up judo again two or three years ago, in a club close to the seminary. Wednesday evenings were reserved for sport in the seminarians’ program. It was easy.”

Today, Father Nioka’s broad smile expresses his happiness at being a priest. But sport remains a passion for him. During the Olympics, he is present at the Olympic Village every day.

“The first vocation of the multiconfessional center is to be a place of listening in the midst of the hustle and bustle of the Olympic Village,” he explained. “The athletes have been training for years. The pressure is very high for them. They hope for victory, but risk failure. You need to know this to listen to them,” he said.

“Faith helps to go beyond failure,” Father Nioka explained. “Winning a competition is not the ultimate goal of life. Faith helps to put that in its proper place.”

“Often, sport and faith are pitted against each other,” he told OSV News. “But I think they have a lot in common. Sport demands that we give the best of ourselves. So does faith. The difference is that faith tends towards something much greater. It transfigures all values. It transcends them by turning us towards God. It points us towards eternal happiness. This is what the Christian Games’ chaplaincy reminds us.”

He added that the athletes’ chaplaincy is a great place to meet people and a place to “share some wonderful moments.”

“We even have Bible-sharing sessions with the Protestants and Orthodox, who are there with us,” he said. “It is wonderful. We really feel the presence of Christ among us.”

After the Olympics, Father Nioka will start university studies in theology and canon law at the Institut Catholique de Paris. He hopes to be able to practice judo there too.

“My experience as a sportsman has always taught me to give the best of myself,” he concluded. “That is what I want to do today, whatever the circumstances. The rest is up to Providence.”