Counting down to the Olympic Games next year, a group of pupils from Stonyhurst St Mary’s Hall and Stonyhurst College in Lancashire joined children from 210 other schools in the Salford diocese to launch a relay of prayer. The event was the first of many over the next nine months which will involve an Olympic Torch of Prayer being taken from school to school, igniting prayer and interest in this coming international event. Each school will be twinned with a competing country and will offer up prayers for that country. Stonyhurst will link up with the Comoros Islands in the Indian Ocean. The aim of the relay is to mark the significance of the Olympic Games by looking at the links between religion and sport and their common ability to bring people together. One of the Olympians in attendance was Andrew Gordon Brown, deputy head of Stonyhurst College, who competed in the South African rowing team in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. Music and sports stars spoke about their experiences and the Bishop Terence Brain of Salford gave an address by video link in which he urged young people in the Church to use their gifts in sport.