Persons with disabilities

#TheChurchIsOurHome: Beyond compassion, people with disabilities are a resource for the Church community

“Rise up and walk!” is how the second video in the series on people with disabilities and the Synod is entitled

 

During his audience on December 12, Pope Francis said: "because we usually associate with disability the idea of need, assistance and at times – thank God, less and less – a certain pietism. No, the Pope does not look at you in this way; the Church does not look at you like that. The Christian point of view on disability is no longer, and must never be pietism or mere assistentialism, but rather the awareness that fragility, assumed with responsibility and solidarity, is a resource for the social body as a whole and for the ecclesial community”.

In the second video of the #TheChurchIsOurHome series, released today, the participants in the special synod listening session explain how belonging to the church community and encountering the Gospel triggers new energy in unexpected ways.

For Enrique Alarcón Garcia, who gets around using a wheelchair, Jesus' words to a cripple - "Rise up and walk!" - are an encouragement to not let oneself be trapped by one's condition and to take upon oneself the responsibility of proclaiming the Gospel and "transforming reality so that it proceeds toward the Kingdom of God."

Being so dynamic, the synodal journey opens up to the full participation of people with disabilities to the life of the Church and enables them to fully understand and live out their unique vocation.

15 December 2022