Like many children of Ukrainian diaspora refugees, Borys Guziack dreamed of a free Ukraine. When Soviet rule collapsed in 1991, he returned quickly to Lviv to help rebuild his country. Born in the United States, educated at Harvard, he had entered seminary at the Greek Orthodox college in Rome. His spiritual father was Henry Nouwen, the celebrated Dutch theologian who spent a decade in the L'Arche community in Toronto. During visits, Guziack was profoundly moved by the humanity of the disabled residents he met there. He envisioned rebuilding, in concert with Ukrainian Patriarch Josyf Slipyj, a Catholic university where people would be formed not by Soviet doctrine but by the principles of Catholic anthropology. Yet he understood that becoming a true professional required more than knowledge. It demanded a full heart. From the start, Bishop Guziack sought to place people with intellectual disabilities at the heart of the university.
Zenia Kushpeta, another diaspora daughter, returned to Ukraine with her own dream: to build something like L'Arche, where she had lived for years in Toronto. In Ukraine, people with disabilities were hidden away by deep prejudice. They needed a new gaze—one that could help them fulfill their calling. In 1992, founding a full community was too early. Instead, Kushpeta began a Faith and Light group and a resource center to shift how society saw people with intellectual disabilities.
Zenia's vision and Borys's converged. Borys offered Zenia a room in the arcaded passages of the Catholic University to establish Centro Emmaus, a space for people with disabilities. Emmaus began with support for students. Prayer groups formed, bringing students and people with disabilities—whom we call "friends"—together. Families received practical help. Gradually, a community of people with disabilities took root in the university. It flourished in ways no one had predicted. Our friends could unsettle you. They could challenge you, especially in how you related to others.
Distrust had poisoned life in former Soviet countries like ours. The only priority was survival—at whatever cost to anyone else. Your neighbor was a threat, liable to betray you at any moment, to cast you out if you weren't a strong, successful homo sovieticus. At Casa Emmaus, you learned what it meant to be accepted unconditionally, whoever you were. This is the universal dignity that God grants, which Archbishop Guziack invoked and defended.
Today Emmaus is a household like those in L'Arche: five people with disabilities living with three young assistants in a student residence. The university's various departments offer specific job placements. Students in social fields do internships at a school for disability autonomy. Friday Café in the university hall and a monthly liturgy in the chapel bring people together—especially those who live isolated lives. Students love coming to Casa Emmaus, just as it is, to share tea with the community, play cards, watch a film. Why? Essentially, for what they receive.
When you arrive at Casa Emmaus and ring the bell, you usually hear someone running down the corridor. The door opens. You're welcomed with a large embrace. Paulo would greet me every time saying, "You're truly extraordinary today!" He said the same to every woman he met, whether for the first time or not, whoever she was.
Spending time with our friends, students discover a simpler world. They are touched by the friends' simplicity and freedom from prejudice, their capacity to love, to wonder, and sometimes by their words of profound wisdom. Many come for a break from study. One student told me his soul finds rest at Casa Emmaus: "I feel at ease because I don't have to prove who I am." Some have chosen to become assistants.
Philosophy is love of knowledge and wisdom—a way of understanding life through reason. People with intellectual disabilities often embody a concrete wisdom of their own. It isn't speculative knowledge, but a lived understanding, a topsy-turvy challenge to how you see things. For me, wisdom rests on truly accepting each person's humanity. It means accepting your own vulnerability. No matter how strong we are, we carry weaknesses we hide as best we can. Besides, all of us face fragility—if not now, then with age.
Luida is about forty-five. Usually, when she returns late from a weekend with her aunt, she doesn't call ahead. Once I watched as a twenty-year-old assistant corrected her. Luida could have shot back, "How dare you speak to me that way? I could be your mother!" Instead, she apologized, deeply sorry. In that moment I understood: God created people without pride—the greatest sin—to confound the proud. The wisdom of our friends includes their consent to be dependent, not only materially: this makes our community a school of humility. How much humility is needed when someone must wash you and change your diaper? We are only God's creatures. We cannot control our lives to the end. Our friends are one step ahead of us.
