When our international coordinator, Raul Izquierdo Garcia, finished his speech and greeted the Pope by saying that, on behalf of communities around the world, he embraced him "the way only our young people with intellectual disabilities know how," Bergoglio already understood. He had already been embraced (as you can see in the photo) by Antonio, who nearly knocked him over in the process. While the rest of us stood frozen with emotion, intimidated by frescoes, velvet, and uniforms, once again the young people showed us what the moment was really about: embracing the Pope. And the Pope embraced us: Antonio, Gianni, Franco, and all the others.
He seemed to genuinely care for Faith and Light, and just as happens in our communities, he conveyed this warmth far more through gesture and smile than through words. He approached Marie-Hélène Mathieu before and after his remarks, gripped her hands firmly, and caressed her head several times. All of us felt that this was "the Pope's caress" for everyone—men and women—who had shaped Faith and Light's history across the world.
The Pope recalled the movement's origins in his remarks, invoking the pilgrimage to Lourdes in 1971. He named no one who had been present at that pilgrimage, as if to emphasize that the movement is larger than any of us who belong to it—it belongs to the Holy Spirit, who "inspired the birth of something no one had foreseen." No one had foreseen that we would alter the sacrosanct "community song" either, but Don Marco Bove, our international spiritual assistant, added the lines "it is the Pope who makes community" after the verses "it is I" and "it is you who make community," and the song began the moment the Pontiff entered the room. We sang loudly with the young people, who were trying right then and there to teach Bergoglio the gestures. They gave up eventually, but I think he enjoyed it anyway.
There were fifty-nine of us in the room—a large number for a private papal audience but small compared to how many wanted to be there. That wasn't possible, and the international team, who had received the Vatican's invitation strictly for Faith and Light's fiftieth anniversary, worked hard to stretch the protocol's boundaries as much as they could. They managed to include the coordinators from the three Italian provinces and a group drawn from communities in Rome and the surrounding areas, so that all aspects of our communities were represented.
«I confirm you in this commitment: to be, amid the storms that people and families face, a small boat where all can find a place, in the certainty that in that same boat is the Lord Jesus» (Pope Francis)
«I confirm you in this commitment: to be, amid the storms that people and families face, a small boat where all can find a place, in the certainty that in that same boat is the Lord Jesus» (Pope Francis)
«Faith and Light is a treasure that doesn't reveal itself at first glance,» Raul said, «but requires encounter, closeness, and friendship.» And in this friendship with people who have intellectual disabilities, "we also learn to recognize our own disabilities—many and varied—and to accept them better." In short, Raul went to the Pope and told him plainly: "We are fragile, Faith and Light is fragile and small." The Pope wasn't troubled by this at all; in fact, he repeated several times that "smallness" is precisely our essence. But smallness doesn't mean hiding. "No one lights a lamp to put it under a basket." Francis urged us not to withdraw into our communities, to be leaven, to bring our experience into parishes and neighborhoods, and to bear witness to God's choice for the last, the small, the excluded. So what is smallness, then? It's the ability to recognize the beauty in each person and to show that beauty to the world: to families wounded by the birth of a child with a disability, to those who live by the cult of efficiency, to those who worship at the altar of normalcy.
Speaking of normalcy, the tall security officer in charge of the room must have found it strange that we were all standing near the end of the audience, like fans at a stadium in the final minutes of a match, trying to hear what Don Marco was saying to the Pope, what Bergoglio was saying to Marie-Hélène. Everyone on their feet. Not knowing the average decibel level of our community gatherings, he waved his arms trying to get us to sit down. Then one of our young women approached him, asked for his phone number, and he quietly stepped away, having finally realized he could just relax and go with it. In short, a fine morning. Not Faith and Light's first encounter with a Pope—Marie-Hélène later reminded the national assembly how affectionate Paul VI had been with us, and perhaps in our "smallness" he saw the sword with which to cut through the Gordian knots of excessive theology and ideological construction in the Church's life.
«I confirm you in this commitment,» Bergoglio concluded, simply but also knowing he was entrusting us with no easy task: «to be, amid the storms that people and families face, a small boat where all can find a place, in the certainty that in that same boat is the Lord Jesus.» This is the commitment we carry forward for the next fifty years and for as long as the Spirit grants it to us.