(ANS – Seoul) – Kim Yu-na, the Olympic and World Figure Ice-Skating Champion, has  given a donation to the Salesians to open a school in Southern Sudan. In the new African State the Salesians are intending to build many new elementary schools.

Last Saturday afternoon, 2 June, Kim Yu-na visited the Salesian Provincial House in Seoul  and met Fr Vincenzo Donati and Bro Giacomo Comino, both Salesian missionaries  in Southern Sudan. She gave them 70 millions of South-Korean won, (about 47,000 euro) personally financing the building of one of these schools.

“"I had a chance to visit Togo a year ago as part of efforts to win support for Korea's bid for the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang and I felt the need to help out children there," Kim told them. "I want to offer what little support I can," she added.
 
Fr Donati thanked her profusely and said one of the schools to be built in Southern Sudan will be named after Kim and asked the athlete to come visit the school after it is completed.

Kim Yu-na became a Catholic convert in 2008, taking the Christian name Stella. She has made other generous donations before: in October 2009 her published gifts amounted to about 2,5 million euro.

Fr Donati  and Bro Comino, who had both dedicated about twenty years as missionaries in South Korea, returned there to seek support for the missionary work in Southern Sudan. “We will make use of our Salesian experience,” – explained Bro Comino – “and then we will put the schools at the disposal of the dioceses, with responsibility to look after the buildings and find teachers.”

The  project in Southern Sudan is for the building of just elementary schools. Fr Gianni Rolandi, Superior of the East Africa Province (AFE), including Southern Sudan  told the MISNA Agency the reason: “This choice is the result of there being an almost total lack of infrastructure in Southern Sudan, an independent country scarcely a year old where the wounds of civil war are still open: one can only begin by building the foundations.”

Published 06/06/2012