Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Fides Service) – “The point of departure for any reflection on disability is rooted in the fundamental persuasions of Christian anthropology: a person with a disability, even when wounded in mind or sensorial or intellectual capacity, is a fully human subject with sacred and inalienable rights proper to every human person”. This was affirmed by the Holy Father Pope John Paul II in a message to participants at a Symposium "Dignity and Rights of Persons with mental Disability", taking place in the Vatican 7 - 9 January, organised by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the end of the European Year for Persons with a Disability.
“The human being, irrespective of his or her condition of life and capacity of expression – the Pope says -, possesses a unique dignity and singular value starting from the first moment of life to the moment of natural death. The person with a disability with all the limits and sufferings with which he or she is marked, obliges us to question ourselves, with respect and wisdom, about the mystery of mankind... the wounded humanity of the disabled person challenges us to acknowledge, accept and promote in each of these brothers and sisters the incomparable value of the human being created by God to be sons and daughters in the Son.”
The Message also says “the world of rights cannot be a privilege only of the healthy” and a society which gives space only to its members who are “fully functional, totally autonomous and independent would not be a society worthy of man. Discrimination on the basis of efficiency is no less deplorable than discrimination on the basis of race, gender or religion in.”
John Paul II writes: "In this regard, the affective and sexual dimensions of the disabled person deserve special attention. (...) She or he also needs to love and be loved, he or she also had a need for tenderness, closeness, intimacy. The reality unfortunately is that the person with a disability find himself or herself living this legitimate and natural needs in a situation of disadvantage which becomes ever more evident with the passing from infancy to adulthood. The subject with a disability (...), yearns for sincere relationships in which he or she is appreciated, respected as a person". "Without a doubt – the Holy Father continues – persons with a disability reveal the radical fragility of the human condition, they are the expression of the drama of suffering and, in our world today thirsting for hedonism and seduced by ephemeral and illusory beauty, their difficulties are often regarded as a scandal and a provocation and their problems as a burden to be removed or hastily resolved".
Addressing the Symposium participants, the Pope ends his message by saying “becoming man and being born in the poverty of a stable, the Son of God proclaimed in himself the blessedness of the afflicted and he shared in all things, except sin, the state of man created in His image. After Calvary, the Cross, embraced with love, he becomes the way and the life and he teaches each of us that if we follow with total trust the arduous and difficult path of human suffering for us and for our brothers and sisters there will flourish the joy of the Living Christ which surpasses every desire and expectation.”
(S.L.) (Fides Service 9/1/2004; lines 39 – words 531)
