SIMON STROZZI, 28, from Parma, Italy, is the youngest referee in the Italian National Basketball Division called “Serie A.” On Feb. 1st he’ll officiate his last game & then join the Xaverian Missionaries near Milan... Here are some of his reflections…

hat a change it’s gonna be! From basketball floors to a life dedicated to evangelization, from the world of sports to world mission. It’s going to be quite a turn around in his life!

“Actually, it has been some sort of personal longing and devotion since my childhood,” Simon Strozzi tells his friends with a smile… “Then, during my adolescence I felt this thing was getting more serious and that the spiritual dimension of my life was getting deeper. So, at the age of 13 I asked my mother to enter the local Minor Seminary. Understandably, she was very hesitant and doubtful: after all, I was very young and my decision was the fruit of feelings and emotions more than on a thorough discernment.”

My mother then replied, “Simon, why don’t you finish your school first? Then we will see.”

“I simply followed my mom’s suggestion – Simon said –. After all, she was the one who had passed on her deep faith and nurtured it with her love and example.

She must have had her reasons to kind of hold me back from joining the seminary at that point. They must have been good reasons coming from her heart, coming from God.”

“Up to now I lived almost my entire life on the courts. I now want to start giving my contribution in building a better world.”
Simon Strozzi

Simon, last of four sons, comes from a very humble family, his mother being a homemaker while his father works at the ‘Barilla’ food company…

“After graduating from College, I started working to help my family financially – Simon continues –. But within myself, I was restless like someone who could not find his own way, or as if I were doing something I did not really want nor choose… I also started officiating basketball games and I liked what I was doing but many questions still remained in my mind…”

Still wondering about his future, Simon decided to ask a Xaverian Missionary – Fr. Piergiorgio Venturini – to be his mentor and to help him in his discernment.

To closely look inside oneself, to analyze and share one’s personal life and deepest motivations and dreams was a difficult and demanding journey.

However, the desire to be Christ’s follower and to share the gift of his faith with others was stronger than anything else for Simon.
Thus, the crucial moment to decide came. And for Simon it arrived this past May. “To communicate my decision to my family was one of the hardest things – Simon acknowledges –. I believe that down deep within her heart, my mother who had been very supportive all along knew about it. But with my dad who is not a ‘devout person’ I thought that things would be different.

Instead, after looking into my eyes, in a very assuring tone he simply said to go ahead and do what I sincerely felt within me, and to go wherever my heart would take me. With these words, my father who never goes to church was the one to spur me on…”

“What was really carrying me on was the joy and the willingness to be a gift of Christ to others. And I assure you that, having decided to pursue missionary priesthood, I am now very happy indeed. Also because the words of Jesus in the Gospel give me so much peace and joy. I cannot deny that the world of sports gave me a lot too. But the life I strive for is somewhere else and I am now willing to follow that call.”

After his last basketball game on February 1st, Simon Strozzi will join the Xaverian Missionaries in Desio, near Milan, where he will study philosophy and begin his formation years…  It is his hope that in the future he will be assigned to complete his theology studies and to serve possibly in Latin America… As a missionary, this young, happy, generous young man will have to leave all behind…: the world he lived in up to today, his home, his work, and the many exciting moments he had in the basketball Arenas he officiated in.

“It is true – Simon adds –. To leave is not easy at all. It will not be easy to detach me from my friends my family and my exciting work… My deepest hope is that anywhere we are, all of us will live in a world free of war and hatred… in a world of peace and harmony with each other. Up to now I lived almost my entire life on the courts. I now want to start giving my contribution in building a better world.”

From “Gente” magazine, Jan. 2, 2004 – by Paola Fucilieri –