Henri Didon

Henri Didon (17 March 1840, Le Touvet – 13 March 1900, Toulouse) was a famous French Dominican preacher. He was also a writer, educator, and a promoter of youth sports. His outsize personality often put him in conflict with his religious hierarchy.

He is also the inventor of the Olympic motto Citius altius fortius. He coined the term for a 1891 youth sports competition he organized in Arcueil and that his friend Pierre de Coubertin was assisting. The latter proposed it as the official motto of the IOC in 1894.

At the age of nine, Henri enters religious school in Grenoble, at the petit séminaire du Rondeau. He succeeds well in school as well as in sports. At the age of 15, he wins three titles during the "Olympic Games of Rondeau", a sports tournament held in the school every 4 years. Educated at under the French Dominican Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire. At the age of eighteen Didon left the seminary of Grenoble to enter the Dominican Order. Didon was an alumnus of the College of St. Thomas, the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas Angelicum in Rome, where in 1862 he completed his philosophical and theological studies.

Returning to France a lector of sacred theology Didon taught Scripture for a brief time, and in 1868 began a career as a preacher in Paris. A desire to communicate his faith to others, coupled with accomplished art, enabled him to make the most of his oratorial abilities. He had strong features, a large forehead, black eyes, a vibrating voice which he perfectly controlled, and an ease in emphasizing his words by gestures. He was at his best when preaching on social subjects. He delivered the funeral oration of Archbishop Georges Darboy, of Paris, who had been shot by the Communists 24 May 1871. In the following year he preached Lenten and Advent conferences in the principal churches of Paris, many of which he published.

...
Wikipedia