"My vocation is to be happy and to live in the midst of my community. It is a privilege to live with fragile people. Someone with a disability certainly needs skilled professionals—good doctors who can give them proper medicine, physiotherapists—but above all they need someone to say to them: I love living with you. To love means to do things for another person, to love means to reveal their beauty, which matters exactly as it is."
These words from Jean Vanier, spoken in Rome last November, prompted us to ask him some questions.
Do you think parishes give adequate attention to welcoming the vulnerable?
The sad truth is that parishes lack real awareness that people with disabilities are something precious. People with disabilities possess a simplicity and a capacity to love in so many ways that can transform our hearts. The Church is meant to be the first home for the weak and the poor, yet for many years people with disabilities were—and sometimes still are—treated as less than fully human. Before communities like L'Arche or Faith and Light existed, before people like Mariangela pioneered this work, the very idea of having a child with intellectual disability was considered a tragedy. What we can do is keep fighting. We must fight not only for people with intellectual disabilities, but especially to teach people what love is—both outside and inside parishes.
There have been enormous advances in accepting people with disabilities, yet Faith and Light communities still face real struggles. Sometimes welcoming vulnerable people doesn't engage our hearts fully. How can we change that?
Most often people are so unsettled by the existence of people with disabilities that they cannot see their beautiful capacity to love. Too many people still think with their heads alone, not their hearts. To open our hearts requires entering into relationship, opening ourselves to genuine dialogue, without worrying about adopting some particular attitude. There is no formula for this transformation: our heart must touch the other person's heart, in communion.
Many families with young disabled children struggle to connect with older people with disabilities. How can we help them feel more comfortable?
I understand parents in communities with many different kinds and degrees of disability, who feel anxious and reluctant to participate. Even when there is hope for improvement, parents suffer seeing what their child might become in ten or twenty years—perhaps because they are not yet ready to face it. To meet this need, in France we are creating small communities for parents of children no older than ten. It is easier to gather this way; something develops among the parents that helps them support and enjoy each other. Hope stays alive and it is easier to trust the future when you are surrounded by young children.
How can we help Faith and Light communities of different faiths live out ecumenism?
It would be beautiful to find people who see unity beyond how we pray, even when we pray differently—I think of Orthodox prayer, for example. In Italy this is difficult because it is such a Catholic country, unlike England or the United States. Every Orthodox or Protestant person is a gift from God; they too have received the Holy Spirit; their parents suffered as Catholic parents suffer. How do we find common ground? One tool is certainly spreading Faith and Light's ecumenical documents, but it is a long road ahead, because many people remain too rooted in their own religious traditions.
How can we reach new friends who have never encountered disability?
We should talk more about disability in schools. Go into classrooms and help students discover the mystery of disability through meetings with vulnerable people, by telling them about their lives and experiences. This was done in the past, but we need renewal now—fresh ideas and new approaches that speak to today's reality.
There are people whose absence goes unnoticed in our daily lives, in church or at school: those who never saw the light because of therapeutic abortion. What can you tell us about this?
In general, people are terrified when they discover they are having a baby with a disability, and quickly turn to abortion as a solution. They think the cost would certainly be less than years of sacrifice and worry. But I believe life is stronger than death. We all struggle and suffer—that is completely natural. Sadly, this suffering, this natural struggle of ours, sometimes pushes people toward the easier choice, but it is not always the one closest to God and to truth.
Interviewed by Cristina Tersigni and Rita Dinale, 2013