How many people—priests, nuns, laypeople—witnessed it directly on television on Easter Sunday: the Pope embracing a spastic boy in St. Peter's Square. Anyone who knows these young people even a little can imagine the emotion and the wave of affection that rushed through that moment.
The Pope, for his part, could not wait to tell the world how desperately he wanted that embrace. Little Dominic seemed to burst out of those arms, he was so happy…
What did they say to each other? Nothing. Some gestures need no words. Who among us did not leap with joy in their heart? Who did not understand that the Pope was sending a brief but vital message to all humanity: "This is my beloved son"—echoing what God the Father said at the baptism of Jesus, presenting His Son to the world.
Why is this episode so important? Why did it shake us all from our indifference?
Those of us who have given our lives—by necessity or by choice—to people with disabilities know from hard experience the rejections they endure, often even from Church people. We know, having borne it in silence, how deeply those rejections wound their relationship with the Church, with faith, with religion itself.
I remember a painful and bewildering story told to me by the brother of a young disabled woman who was difficult, unpredictable—unable to sit still in a church pew, unable to stay quiet if she wanted to cry out. Yet she was part of the community. Everyone knew her. And though with difficulty, they had learned to love her and "tolerate" her presence.
He told me that on Palm Sunday there had been a parish gathering with Pope John Paul II. We had hoped this would mean a warm and loving welcome for people with disabilities. Instead, the pastor had called him aside and asked, with some embarrassment and hesitation, whether Maria could stay home for the event—since her presence might disturb the celebration too much.
The poor man said yes. He understood.
When he told me this story, though, I said I did not understand. That pastor needed to be told that John Paul II, and above all Jesus, would have been deeply offended to learn that Maria's presence might "disturb" them…
You cannot imagine how much rebellion, outrage, and anger came from those actions so far removed from what Jesus showed us in the Gospel, teaching us how to behave toward those who suffer.
We have asked ourselves many times over these years why it was so hard to open our arms, our hearts, our minds to those who need to be welcomed and affirmed more than anyone else—to receive a gesture that, without words, speaks the love God holds for them.
We have found answers, wrong ones, harmful ones, shameful ones: the person whose suffering is visible awakens in those who approach them for the first time a sense of rejection, discomfort, fear. We try to hide it as best we can, and in doing so we create more awkwardness and pain.
It is not easy to react differently, because it is more natural to hide behind "I can't do this," "It's too much for me," "I wish I could, but I feel helpless"…
It is true—we must forgive those who have never learned to face suffering. But we must also rejoice that a Pope, at the threshold of his ministry, was given the opportunity to show us in a few minutes: "This is how it's done." Enough with fear. Enough with hesitation. Now we must go toward them with arms wide open, hold them to our hearts, live with each of them, with every single one of them, an embrace of communion. So be it.
Mariangela Bertolini, 2013