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INTENTION : |
That the mentally disabled may receive the love and help they need for a dignified life.
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There are about a billion persons with disabilities in the whole world, 80% of whom live in developing countries. These data emerged in 2011 from the first report on disability produced by the World Health Organization (WHO). From these data, however, it is not easy to find out how many are the mentally disabled, for whom the Pope invites us to pray in this month of September 2014. We know that there are millions, and that they are all those persons who have never had, or who have lost, the ability to understand and will. So they live in a more complete state of dependence than the others. They have no hope of cure, even if treated with psychological medicine.
In general, and more or less everywhere, the mentally disabled suffer discrimination of all kinds: from the right to be born, if there are already signs of the illness in the pre-natal examination, to abandonment of any kind of assistance, especially if they come to lose their family, to becoming objects of contempt, derision, and mockery. They are, therefore, people among the most defenceless, the most at risk, so that, if they could express themselves, very many of them would say, like the paralytic in the gospel, 'Lord, I have no one to help me'(John 5:7).
The Pope reminds us that there is something really great that we can do for them. Pray! - that 'they may receive the love and the help they need for a life of dignity.' Which means, concretely, recognition, attention, promotion, sharing, help, constant and high-quality care: and that without distinction of birth, nationality, or religion, and with greater urgency, the more vulnerable they are in their condition. In the prayer intention, the Pope alludes also to their dignity. They are not second-class persons. In them is all the value impressed by the Creator on every human being. There is something more: the mysterious resemblance to the suffering Servant described by the prophet Isaiah, anticipation of the disfigured body of Jesus in his passion and crucifixion. Let us pray every day, with the Pope's words, that a society which will take care of them will spread in the world.
Fr. Nino Minetti, SdC
Italian Provincial of the Congregation of San Luigi Guanella and Superior General emeritus
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