Whoever buys his Christmas tree this weekend from the altar boys in the parish garden of the Basilica of St. Anthony will rub his eyes. There is Saint Aloisius standing on the pedestal, tied up with strong ribbons and looking sad.
However, the saint, whose statue used to adorn the gable of the Dechant Pitz House, should not be burned at the stake under any circumstances, nor should anything similarly brutal be done to him. The patron saint of students and young people, who died as a young Jesuit in Rome in 1591, rather serves as a fixture for the lights that illuminate Pastor’s garden with the fir trees in the evening hours.
Saint Aloisius, however, is only temporarily “abused” as a light stand holder.
Unlike in Pastor’s garden in Rheine, the saint has been captured in a picture elsewhere for eternity:
Maloche and soccer as a source of identity
In the course of reconstruction in the 1950s, St. Joseph’s Church in Gelsenkirchen-Schalke received new windows designed by master painter Franz Klocke, dealing with themes that were relevant to post-war Schalke: Maloche – and soccer. St. Aloisius, for example, adorns a stained-glass window designed in 1959 and installed in 1960, i.e. immediately after the last Schalke championship in 1958. Aloisius wears soccer shoes and blue-and-white socks, and a soccer ball lies in front of him.
