Sister Veronica Donatello heads the Catechesis Sector for People with Disabilities at the National Catechetical Office of the Italian Episcopal Conference. In 2016, President Sergio Mattarella awarded her one of forty honors recognizing merit to the Italian Republic.
Sister Veronica received it "for her contribution to the full inclusion of people with disabilities." A Roman native, 42, a member of the Congregation of the Alcantarine Franciscan Sisters, she works as both educator and member of technical and scientific committees on the inclusion and active participation of people with disabilities. She is an expert in augmentative and alternative communication and in Italian Sign Language for text accessibility. We asked her several questions.
We read that this award left you speechless. As a civic recognition, it raises the question of the often-difficult relationship between faith and secularism in our time. But might inclusion of those at the margins of society offer common ground?
The Church of the Council, as we see it lived out today, asks precisely this of us: a Church that goes out, that draws near, that stands beside. This recognition is a sign that the Christian community truly has positioned itself as a Church in mission—present not only within itself but also outward, in a covenant of shared commitment. I think of our dioceses that give voice to those on the margins: parishes supporting couples, young couples preparing for marriage, catechesis programs, youth centers, pastoral care for adults in day programs, accompaniment of the dying, and structures for the future that genuinely involve associations and society as a whole. We'll speak more about this future at a seminar the National Catechetical Office is organizing for May 10 in Bologna. Together, we have managed to remove barriers—not only physical ones, but mental ones too. We have built bridges.
You've said you grew up surrounded by people with disabilities, but instead of running away or rejecting that reality, you immersed yourself in it. What journey was necessary?
A journey of humanity. I learned to welcome everything that happens, everything one can experience at a human level—through encounter, discovery. My parents were different from others because they are Deaf. My sister Chiara has her own disability. I lived what every human lives: joy, frustration, anger. Not anger toward my parents, perhaps toward society. Sometimes toward the Church too, when it refused my sister the Sacraments, or when it had isolated people with disabilities in separate places and specialized settings. I was blessed to have two parents who live their disability with serenity and generosity, even as they lived what all parents like them live. I believe their witness helped me first of all, and then over the years I was able to encounter people who taught me to read my story as a story of gift—not only for me, but for a community, for the Church. Being human in truth, in relationship, within what you actually live.
What change do you think is necessary for people with disabilities?
People with disabilities themselves must believe they have the same dignity as everyone else. Benedict XVI said this in 2009 when he noted that through Baptism, we are all evangelizers in our community—even when we use different languages and different ways of communicating.
The Christian community embraces the challenge Pope Francis issued on June 11 of this year: "all or none." A Church that does not welcome everyone is a Church missing pieces of itself—like a house half-built, which is not truly a home. I think about Sunday liturgy, which is what truly remains in communities, regardless of the various spiritual paths we might develop. We need liturgies that, in their humanity and without inventing strange things, honor what these communities already have at their heart, while accounting for the presence of all. Then there is youth ministry, play, youth groups, adult catechesis. We must not fear difference. We must allow people with disabilities to express their faith alongside others, not merely testify to it.
In your talks, one senses the need to consider people with disabilities in their fullness: enough with sentimentality, infantilizing attitudes, which are still so present in our daily lives. How can we help people shift their gaze toward people with disabilities—and perhaps help the people themselves and their families shift their gaze toward themselves?
Their presence must be normalized. Not just at "the feast of the sick" or the "celebration of people with disabilities"! As brothers and sisters in the Christian community, they belong to it. This helps them realize that everyone has gifts and limits.
The real challenge is encounter, knowledge, empathy—and these only happen when you let the other person be part of daily life, not just show up for special pastoral events. That's what we mean by inclusion. Everyone is called to dwell—one of the verbs that emerged from the Florence conference—in the territory, in history. Hannah Arendt, the German philosopher, underscored the importance of allowing people to narrate their own story. We must recognize in people with disabilities a capacity for autobiography. We must let them exist in our society.
Even in Amoris Laetitia, paragraph 47, it stresses that couples living this experience understand that their child can become a gift only if they feel supported in rereading this story. You cannot do it alone. That is the Church's challenge: the Church is not "I" but "we." The couple themselves, with their parental wisdom, become a gift to the Christian community. This happens only by making space, by letting them take the stand—the stand that God has chosen, that of the last. Why not dare? Those who do discover it is beautiful and possible. To be valued, recognized in one's desires. Instead, we so often speak, we choose for them.
We need to revise our way of seeing and work against the mindset of the self-righteous, as in Jesus's day, who already know and already understand. Stop seeing the other as different, as a problem, as dysfunctional, as a case, as a disturbance, as SEN. These terms risk ghettoizing the other. According to Heidegger, when we speak of care, the other's existence is true care. To care for their existence is to let them exist. Care with no trace of charity, sentimentality, or rehabilitation services.
There are beautiful studies and books on the spiritual dimension of people with disabilities—even severe disabilities. As a Church, we risk losing what is given to us by grace. Less and less often, thank God! I spoke recently with parish priests and bishops who encounter couples with disabled children in their homes, and it is beautiful. More and more people are daring. Many no longer ask whether something can be done; they ask how. They ask for help, tools, how to work alongside the couple. One pastor told me that in the youth group there are two severely disabled adolescents who are bedridden, and the group visits them twice a month. This is beautiful, and it creates a new culture: it means putting into practice new ways of living that are also ordinary, that don't make the newspapers—only I would know. It means making noise where you are, through small gestures of ordinariness.
Cristina Tersigni, 2017