I'm Sharing Ombre e Luci
My best wishes to all of you at Ombre e Luci. I value your magazine enormously. I hope it reaches more and more people and brings genuine light and real hope to those who truly need it.
While recently hospitalized for thyroid surgery, I met a wonderful older woman, grandmother of Daniela, a child with severe multiple disabilities. I told her about your magazine and sent her some copies that same day. But I think it would be excellent if your editorial office also sent her one or two issues with a subscription proposal.
Liliana Morandi, Teacher
Sacraments for Them Too
Thank you so much for sending me Ombre e Luci. I received an issue devoted entirely to catechesis. I wasn't familiar with it, so I read it with great interest and found it truly well done: the content is clear and accurate in how it addresses disability. The language is simple and accessible to everyone. Bissonnier's article is exceptionally thoughtful, both in substance and in the practicality of its ideas. Bishop Boccaccio also makes a valuable contribution—all the more powerful coming from a bishop. Every account felt real and meaningful.
I want to thank everyone who helped create this "gem," because I'm certain that with proper use and distribution, it can help shape a new way of thinking about how to bring the Gospel to people, even those with serious disabilities. I also believe it will be a real encouragement to families.
May the Lord bless your work in this vital area, especially now when the Spirit is stirring "signs of hope" and gestures of goodwill in our Church. I'm thinking particularly of the Coordination Group for Disability Services established by the Italian Bishops' Conference, and the late January seminar on this topic they organized as well.
Let us continue our work without tiring, joining our efforts ever more closely for the common good.
With affection and gratitude
Teresa D'Alessandro
A Doctor in Albania
Once again, in addition to my own subscription (please update my address as noted below), I'm sending a gift subscription for 1993 issues to new friends.
I hope it's all right if I'm nominating two people with one subscription. They're both doctors at child neuropsychiatric institutions in Albania—in Tirana and Durrës. I visited that country last September. If I had to describe what I found there in a few words, I'd say the situation is utterly desolate: profound poverty and underdevelopment everywhere. In larger cities, economic conditions and services are somewhat better; in rural areas, life is far more difficult and precarious.
Medicine reflects these broader hardships. Like other fields, it bears the weight of fifty years of isolation—complete absence of cultural exchange until just two years ago, when even foreign texts were forbidden to enter the country. Now Albanian doctors struggle to pursue professional development abroad because visa restrictions (especially in Italy, where authorities fear emigration) make it nearly impossible.
The child neuropsychiatric institutions I visited are severely under-resourced, built on scant theoretical foundations, and at serious risk of losing motivated staff. That's why Ombre e Luci will be so valuable to them. Italian is fairly widely spoken there.
Salvatore Russo