Faith and Light
A movement founded in 1971 in France by Jean Vanier and Marie-Hélène Mathieu, and promoted in Italy since 1974 by Mariangela Bertolini and Mother Ida. Faith and Light brings together communities of people with intellectual disabilities, their families, and their friends.
L'Arche
Founded by Jean Vanier. L'Arche communities welcome people with intellectual and mental disabilities and their assistants under one roof, sharing life together.
Ombre e Luci
Born as a cyclostyle publication in 1964 at Trosly, it became the quarterly journal Ombre e Luci in 1983, founded by Mariangela Bertolini and Nicole Shulthes. A Christian magazine for families and friends of people with disabilities and social difficulties.
Ombre e Luci exists to
Serve as a resource for parents raising a child with a disability—not primarily on medical or rehabilitative grounds (other journals serve that purpose with greater expertise) but on educational, psychological, and spiritual ones.
Inform those unfamiliar with disability so they may better understand those who live with it, and welcome and love them more fully.
Build community around families—so often isolated and closed off in their suffering—by drawing together friends willing to share their joys and sorrows, their victories and struggles, and to see with fresh eyes those deemed tragic, so that parents and companions may discover and love the person beyond the disability.
Foster the inclusion and integration of people with disabilities in society and in the Church.
To these ends, Ombre e Luci calls on all of you, our readers, to join us in this work—to become a family where finding one another heals the heart.
One inspiration guides us all: to reveal the gifts of the disabled person as a call to unity and community.
Thanks
We offer our gratitude once again to Tipografia Quintily, a steadfast partner in Ombre e Luci's mission for twenty-five years, for generously providing the printing of this landmark 100th issue.