FIDA Day: Story of the Catholic who founded the Football World Cup

The FIFA World Cup, played every four years, is one of the most anticipated international sporting events. What few know is that it was a French Catholic who founded this tournament.

This is Jules Rimet, born on October 14, 1873 in the French village of Theuley. When he was a child he served as an altar boy in the local church and at the age of ten he left for Paris, where his family was looking for an opportunity to have a better quality of life in the midst of the economic crisis.

According to the Catholic Herald, when Pope Leo XIII issued his encyclical in 1891 Of the new thingsthe young Rimet and his friends felt challenged by the Pontiff’s concern about the misery in which the working classes lived and the lack of labor reforms.

Inspired by the text, they founded an organization to provide social and medical assistance to the poorest. Even after becoming a successful lawyer, Rimet continued to do charity work.

The young Frenchman also loved sports and had a firm belief that they united people, beyond race and social class. At the age of 24 he founded a sports club Red Staropen to anyone regardless of their economic condition.

“Men will be able to meet in trust without hate in their hearts and without an insult on their lips,” he used to say when sharing his vision of sports.

At that time, football was still despised because it was considered a sport typical of the lower class and the English. However, Rimet decided to include him in his club.

In 1904 the French lawyer helped found the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (International Federation of Association Football – FIFA). He wanted to organize an international tournament, but the start of World War I delayed his plans.

Rimet also served on the front lines for four years and was awarded the Croix de Guerre, a French military decoration awarded to those who distinguished themselves by their heroism.

After the end of the war, Rimet became president of FIFA in 1921 and remained in office for 33 years, the longest term in the history of the institution.

His ideals about sport motivated him to create the World Cup in 1928, which was played two years later for the first time in Uruguay. Jules Rimet took the trophy that bore his name to South America with him until 1970, when the design of the cup was changed to the one that is awarded to this day.

Trofeo Jules Rimet / Photo: Flickr Revolweb (CC BY-SA 2.0)

The Catholic lawyer led FIFA until 1954 and in 1956 he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for having founded the World Cup. He died in France in 1956 at the age of 83.

In the book A History of Football in 100 ObjectsYves Rimet, his grandson, remembers him as a “humanist and idealist, who believed that sport could unite the world. Compared to the people of his time, he realized that to be truly democratic and to truly engage the masses, international sport had to be professional.”

In an interview with the newspaper The Independent In 2006, Yves stated that his grandfather “would have been disappointed to see that today football has become a business dominated by money. That was not his vision.”

Translated and adapted by María Ximena Rondón. Originally published in 2018 in CNA.