Try to imagine what might drive someone to organize a pilgrimage.
A pilgrimage in Faith and Light.
Such an undertaking is always a positive, courageous thing—born from different impulses and motivations: the history of a movement, its sense of belonging, the search for moments of communion.
Our movement itself was born from a pilgrimage to Lourdes at Easter 1971.
Three essential motivations led to organizing it:
The desire to travel with people with mental disabilities to a shrine, just as everyone else does.
The hope that this experience would break with the past, opening a new way of "seeing" the person with mental disability;
The search for moments of communion, dialogue, and shared suffering.
These elements made that pilgrimage possible—and it proved to be a miracle: the birth of the international movement "Foi et Lumière."
The courage to pursue a dream transformed suffering into communion. The fear of attempting such a bold project became joy, became dialogue, became the longing to relive those feelings of togetherness, of building community, of making the pilgrimage again and again.
The alternative was to remain still, afraid, sterile, locked in our own pain—thinking we were alone.
The pilgrimage became, once again, a sign of hope, a desire to change things, a desire to create something new—to discover fresh ways of honoring that inner beauty that belongs to every human being, even those with mental disabilities.
I believe the same values that shaped the Lourdes pilgrimage inspired the desire for the one to Rome and Assisi in June 2015. Even though times have changed, even though society grows more technological each day, then as now and always, every member of Faith and Light continues to want to be together, to share, to build community, to walk as a pilgrim. We seek that strong sense of belonging to the movement, and we want to feel ready to set out on the journey.
These hopes gave birth to our 40th anniversary pilgrimage: it was conceived and planned more than two years before, at the National Assembly of 2013, with both excitement and a sense of responsibility—organizing a new national pilgrimage after ten years.
Once we decided to go, we faced a second question: where? Which destination?
We wanted to go to the Basilica of Saint Peter to meet Pope Francis, and then, following Faith and Light tradition, to continue to Assisi, walking in the footsteps of Saint Francis.
What would we bring? The hope of being welcomed, of laying our suffering and disappointment at the feet of Pope Francis, of being embraced despite our weakness.
These hopes shaped our theme. At Pentecost 2014, during a meeting, Don Marco Bove—our ecclesiastical assistant—suggested "Take courage, it is I" (Matthew 14:27).
Then came the day of departure. Allow me a metaphor: we were like a soccer team that had completed its training. We had studied every technical detail and prepared ourselves. Now the match begins. The better the preparation, the better our chance of success.
And indeed, the preparation was thorough. The thematic team and the logistics team worked separately but consulted constantly on all the practical and thematic elements—involving the communities themselves.
We scheduled coordination briefings, held meetings, made phone calls, sent emails. We decided on hotel rooms, bus assignments, prepared boxes, photos, and objects to carry: banners, posters, stones—all the things we know are hard to fit in a suitcase.
This is organizing a match where the score is not measured in numbers or wins. The real result is a smile, joy, communion as we walk together toward one victory that belongs to all of us equally—the happiness of belonging to the great family of Faith and Light.
We cannot know how many goals we scored when we sang together in the Lyrick Theater, or inside the Basilica Maggiore at Assisi during the vigil, or in the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli during the final Mass.
We may not know the score, but given how those in Faith and Light understand a pilgrimage—to live a great event in communion and celebrate our history together—then at Assisi and Rome we can say we won our cup!
We returned to our communities as true CHAMPIONS!
Champions of JOY.