From March 26 to 28, 2004, Cassano delle Murge in Bari province hosted a training course organized by the National Catechetical Office (Disability Catechesis Sector) of the Italian Bishops' Conference. The course, titled "Sunday With the Disabled," aimed above all to affirm that disabled people are at the heart of the Church and are full members of the Christian community.
The course was coordinated by a team including Dr. Paola Scarcella, Fr. Giuseppe Morante, psychologist Francesco Pieroni, and psychiatrist Corrado Dastoli. Rather than lectures, the program relied on lived experience: simulations, personal testimonies, group dynamics, and interactive dialogue. Participants drew lessons from concrete situations and worked to distill general principles.
This approach kept the subject grounded and real. The presenters avoided abstract or rhetorical language, staying close to how people actually live.
The course revealed a Church already moving forward in its relationship with disabled people, their families, and advocacy organizations. The path is steep—many obstacles and resistances remain, and discouragement is real. Yet conversation, dialogue, and growing awareness offer genuine chances to form and sensitize communities.
The discussion continues. The destination is visible but not yet reached. Still, a growing conviction now holds in the Church: disabled people, as participants in the liturgical life of the community, possess the right and duty that belongs to every baptized Christian.
An authentic, living parish realizes integrated worship. Only through encounter, welcome, and shared life with the other—with those who are different, with the vulnerable—can we pursue the "pedagogy of hope" that Jesus taught us. He placed the little ones at the center, as teachers of tenderness, as celebrants of life itself.
Vanna Rossani, 2004
