Who hasn’t heard of scouts? Perhaps one day you’ve encountered one on the street or maybe even spoken to one without realizing. So, who are they? According to the Aurélio dictionary, a scout is someone who travels with little or no baggage, a pioneer, explorer, member of a scouting association, or a crew member of a small boat, among other definitions. Currently, Scouting is practiced by various associations worldwide, such as the National Scout Corps (CNE) in Portugal and the Association of Guides and Scouts of Brazil (AG&E) in Brazil, which follows the pedagogy of the International Union of Guides and Scouts of Europe (UIGSE-FSE). Both associations practice scouting in accordance with Christian values based on the precepts of the Roman Catholic Church. The entire educational program of Catholic Scouting is grounded in Baden-Powell’s work “Scouting for Boys” and the implementation of the traditional scouting method, as recognized by UIGSE-FSE.
But who founded Catholic Scouting? Catholic Scouting originated from the meeting of Father Jacques Sevin with General Robert Baden-Powell on September 20, 1913, in England, to evaluate the effectiveness of the scouting method. Jacques Sevin was a priest of the Jesuit Order founded by Saint Ignatius of Loyola, born on December 7, 1882, and died on July 19, 1951.
Concerned about the renewal of pedagogical methods in Jesuit schools, Sevin noticed a certain discrepancy between the missionary spirit of the origins and the concrete life of the schools. Therefore, Baden-Powell’s Scouting seemed to provide him with the necessary tools for a return to the origins and rediscover the correct Ignatian intuition of an active, generous, and missionary education in which goals inspired methods.
Father Sevin gave Baden-Powell’s pedagogy a distinctly Christian soul, rewriting the Scout Law and Promise and introducing the spiritual dimension. He also created a “Liturgy” of commitments through a ceremony and composed a series of short poems to support a joyful spirituality based on the promise and centered on Baptism. All of this culminated in the founding of the Scouts de France, French Catholic scouts affiliated with the World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM), or in Portuguese, OMME (World Organization of the Scout Movement). Additionally, he created the Congregation of the Cross of Jerusalem, an order that uses the Cross of Jerusalem as a backdrop, revealing the extent of Christ’s sacrifice to the four corners of the world and the Fleur-de-Lis as a symbol of scouting. Sevin used scouting as a path to follow the calls of Jesus Christ, stating, “the ambition of every patrol leader should be to follow the Master and help his patrol do the same.”
Finally, the scouting envisioned by Father Sevin is a call to apostolate in the one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church, or rather, an invitation to holiness. In other words, every scout is encouraged to live as a true imitator of Jesus Christ, as that is the will of God. Baden-Powell himself confirmed this, saying, “the best realization of my ideas in scouting was done by a man in a cassock!” The congruence of the scouting method with religion has been clear since the inception of scouting. As Lord Baden-Powell wrote, “The Scout is a believer, and I reject any form of scouting that does not have religion as its foundation.”
By: Wander Venerio Cardoso de Freitas
Specialist in Religious Education. Specialist in Physical Training for the Elderly. Postgraduate student in School Physical Education. Licensed in Physical Education, Licensed in Portuguese Language, Licensed in Pedagogy, and Bachelor in Theology.
