In a mix of joy, excitement and sadness, families, associations and individuals from all over the world celebrated the Jubilee of People with Disabilities with a Mass yesterday in Rome’s Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls. Source: OSV News.
Joy reverberated inside the basilica. Sadness was felt, too, because instead of meeting Pope Francis, the people with disabilities who flocked to Rome had to say goodbye to the pontiff who reached out to those often excluded from society.
“The Christian community first prays,” said Archbishop Rino Fisichella, organiser of the Jubilee 2025 events and pro-prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization under Pope Francis.
Prayer “is our salvation,” he told the packed basilica.
The first prayer, Archbishop Fisichella said, is to “ask the Lord for the courage not to remain silent, the courage to always proclaim that Christ is risen.”
Speaking to the many people with disabilities who came with their caregivers, Archbishop Fisichella said: “Let us remember that we always have a community to refer to, our little Church.”
American Catholic journalist JD Flynn, who was with his wife, said several months ago they “felt sort of a call to come to the Jubilee for People with Disabilities”.
Thanks to the generosity of sponsors, they brought four other families “from all over the US” to Rome and, who – like the Flynns – have children with Down syndrome.
“It’s been a gift to come together and pray together. I think it was a gift to be at this Mass,” Mr Flynn said.
“People with disabilities don’t always experience that. Sometimes they experience the Church as their home. But as often as not, they experience marginalisation in the Church or isolation in the Church, not necessarily by malice, but just a failure to appreciate the kinds of accommodations that they need,” the father of three said.
“Pope Francis said a few years ago: ‘The Church is your home.’ It was a call for all of us Catholics to exercise the Lord’s preferential love for the poor – by exercising the Lord’s preferential love for people with disabilities,” he said.
FULL STORY
People with disabilities ‘have a sense of the global Church,’ rejoice with caregivers during Rome Jubilee (By Paulina Guzik, OSV News)
