Dear friends of Faith and Light, I welcome this opportunity, on your fortieth anniversary, to offer you warm greetings and to share some thoughts on matters close to our hearts.
I want to begin by offering you "a gift"—the richness of our precious Pastoral Guidelines: We Meet Jesus. The word "disability" appears sparingly in the document, so much so that one might think it had been overlooked. Yet a careful reading reveals something different: the bishops propose a fresh vision for the entire Church's understanding of this reality. The document's central idea is to reimagine catechesis through an inclusive lens, where belonging to the life of the Church involves everyone—including people with disabilities and their families.
This vision runs through the document in multiple ways: in how it describes vulnerable realities, in pastoral attention and care, in the Church's concern for the poor and excluded, and in a new understanding of catechesis as an active, participatory witness to faith. Most importantly, it calls for people with disabilities to participate fully in the life of their Christian communities. This renewal of catechesis involves a broad network of collaborators: families, lay associations, religious communities, and all other educational partnerships (n. 93). That means you. Let us take four steps together.
Dwelling in Hope in Our Time: A New Commitment to Evangelization
Our contemporary culture—"liquid," as Bauman might say, or "a culture of waste," in Pope Francis's words—calls us to a task: to show everyone that "no person is a treasure to be hidden away." Sometimes when we look at disabled young people and adults, even in our parishes, we focus on their limitations, their fragility, their visible signs of difference. But the Guidelines ask us to encounter each person and discover that they are not defined by their limits or their disability. They are a "sister" or "brother," a person—because we all share the fundamental dignity of being created in the image and likeness of God (n.10). For everyone, faith is an encounter with Christ. We are called increasingly to build Christian communities that include all people: through listening to God's Word, sharing in Sunday Eucharist, and practicing charity. Communities where people experience the living relationship with Jesus in word and gesture, where they truly belong. "As one candle lights another, so faith kindles faith." The bonds of brotherhood that form in such places take on a different character, where the last, the excluded, stand at the center (n.12)—not at the margins of existence.
Proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus
The bishops' guidelines for the coming decade teach us that fragility is "a school from which to learn" (EVBV, n. 54b). Together, then, we are called to educate our Church communities in this school—to value the active presence of people and families who live with fragility, illness, and precarity. We must strengthen the understanding that every person has worth before God simply because they are human, not because of what they can produce. In step with the Church's mission, we are called to accompany families at life's crucial moments: when they face a diagnosis and feel helpless, and through their final encounter with death. It becomes essential to honor the real places where life unfolds, using the methods you have developed. These are places that can become truly inclusive in catechesis, in listening to the Gospel, in partnership with the wider community—through play, sports, and creative gatherings.
Initiating, Accompanying, and Sustaining the Experience of Faith
Catechesis is the Church's primary task because it reflects the maternal nature of the Church. The Guidelines call for a more decisive and unified effort (EVBV n. 26) so that attention to and active involvement of people with disabilities and their families becomes ordinary, not occasional, in our parishes. How? By assisting priests and catechetical teams in guiding disabled young people through Christian initiation (n. 58-59) alongside their peers. By helping the whole community adopt new ways of communicating, using contemporary languages and tools. By creating a sense of belonging to the group and community that persists after the formal period of initiation. By making it ordinary for disabled people to participate actively in Sunday Mass, the celebration that gathers the family of faith. By ensuring that the baptized person with disability becomes the protagonist of their own faith journey (n.54) and becomes, themselves, an evangelizer. Where? In the parish—the house among the houses of the people. Not merely a place of ceremonies or occasional events, but a welcoming space of meaningful relationships and support for growing independence (n. 55). This requires designing and providing inclusive catechetical paths, accessible materials that account for different disabilities and communication styles (n. 56). Only when we adopt this vision do we stop seeing the person with disability as a problem and begin to recognize them as a treasure to be shared.
Witnessing and Telling Stories: Forming Servants of the Gospel
The final section sketches the figure of the catechist-educator: one who accompanies people to encounter Jesus the Master and witnesses to him with the joy of their own life in the Church. New forms of accompaniment emerge (n. 67)—those who can narrate the experience of saving encounter in many different voices and styles. The Church's formative mission requires a plurality of ministries and tasks to reflect the actual life of communities.
The testimonial value of the person who is disabled, who is fragile, must always be recognized within our communities and honored in every aspect of life (n. 71). For when we orient ourselves toward the other, we understand that "every human being is the object of the infinite tenderness of the Lord, and He himself dwells in their life. Jesus Christ shed his precious blood on the cross for that person. Beyond any appearance, each one is immensely sacred and deserves our affection and our dedication." To be authentic companions who announce the Risen Christ requires us to harmonize various forms of communication—so that people can encounter each other and the mystery of God, and the community as a whole. We must ensure that the languages of faith—liturgical and experiential—fully account for diverse learning styles and various disabilities (n. 73). We are called to share good practices and develop the skills needed to achieve genuine inclusion of people with disabilities in the ordinary life of the community (n. 90).
I believe this is the great legacy left to you by Jean Vanier and Marie-Hélène Mathieu, following the Master who says: "I have set you an example, so that you should do as I have done" (Jn 13:15).
"Let us never forget that true power is service. We must care for people, attend to each person with love—especially children, the elderly, and those most fragile, those often on the periphery" (Pope Francis). You are the guardians and stewards of this mission. Offer it as a gift to your communities.
Sister Veronica Amata Donatello,
Italian Bishops' Conference - Commission for Catechesis with Persons with Disabilities
Is there beauty in disability? Is there richness in disability? By inviting us not to associate it with exclusion and marginalization, Pope Francis has helped us see disability as the root and origin of genuine encounter. "The person who is ill or disabled," he declared on March 29, 2014, "precisely through their fragility, through their limitations, can become a witness to encounter."
From the beginning of his papacy, Pope Francis has spoken forcefully against the culture of waste—a culture that deeply marks our society. One need only step outside, turn on the news, listen to public discourse to see this. The only response to this culture of death is to begin again from the "peripheries"—not only geographic ones, but existential ones. The style required for this wholesome renewal is an ancient one, which has always characterized our Church: the style of Jesus Christ.
Pope Francis turned this invitation into action on March 19, 2013, during his first walk through St. Peter's Square. Seeing a person with a disability, he stops the car, gets out, listens, embraces, and kisses them.
Here the announcement became concrete. Simple gestures, yet intense, repeated like a ritual, like a dance, like a desire. Francis continues: on Holy Thursday of that same year, washing the feet of disabled young people at Don Gnocchi's center; on Easter Sunday with Dominic; in the days that follow, giving his seat to a boy with Down syndrome, and on to today. Following the Master, the Pope works for a culture of encounter marked by five active verbs: the Pope "sees" (rather than merely looks), "stops," "listens," "embraces," and "kisses." These gestures of proximity and tenderness teach us—as a community and as a society—to follow his style through concrete actions we might describe this way:
Stop, to be provoked. The periphery is the center. We must work to overcome widespread prejudice and build a Church of "we," not of elites. An elite Church excludes people with disabilities, the sick, the fragile.
See—notice that the other exists. On June 21 in Cassano allo Jonio, the Pope stops the motorcade. The schedule is upended. The Pope exits his car to greet the family of Roberta, a disabled young woman. With gestures of proximity toward her family, toward those at the margins. Gestures that communicate God's nearness, tenderness, and the power of his love.
Listen: at the Seraphic Institute in Assisi, on October 4, Pope Francis develops his homily from the faces of multiply disabled young people and their families. "Let us listen to the wounds of Christ," he says.
Embrace: the embrace, the smile, the silence in every moment. People standing in St. Peter's Square remark that the Pope teaches us not to fear tenderness, to love. But to do this, we are called in our communities and in society to envision a comprehensive life project—not merely education and care, but "dignity so as to create the future and foster healthy independence" (Message to the Fourth Festival of Catholic Social Teaching). We are called not to hide these treasures, because they stir us to move forward and create new possibilities. Not patches, not segregated spaces, not the mere recognition of quotas. But something more. Much more.
Kiss: At Kkottongnae, in Asia, no speech. The media watch. Waiting for the Pope are the "last," the discarded—all children of God. And Pope Francis? No speech. He kisses. The kiss: a sign of life, of tenderness, of affection, of presence. Yes, that kiss that says "thank you," that says "I love you."
As you mark your fortieth anniversary, dear friends of Faith and Light, renew your commitment to continue together in building a culture of encounter—beginning with those the world throws away. Think of the courage of Jean Vanier and Marie-Hélène Mathieu, who shook public opinion, created life where there was death, and involved families, disabled young people and adults through their witness in parishes. Pope Francis is confirming us on this path—witnessing and giving voice, without lengthy speeches, to the dignity all God's children possess, to their right to spiritual life, to full participation in the Christian community, to be active witnesses themselves. He invites us to create life projects that embrace the whole person with disability: their faith, education, affective life, dignity as workers, and—for the most severely disabled—what will sustain them now and after we are gone.
These elements can flourish only through the care, affection, and "warmth" of our communities. In this way—as the Italian bishops affirm in a recent document—"we touch the heart of faith itself, the proclamation of the God of life, the revelation of the paschal mystery of death and resurrection" (Italian Bishops' Conference, We Meet Jesus, n. 41).
Mons. Nunzio Galantino - Secretary General of the Italian Bishops' Conference
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