In 2013, Pope Francis penned his encyclical Evangeli Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel) in and called the church to a pastoral conversion by becoming an evangelising church, a missionary church which responds to Jesus’ instructions to his disciples to “Go and make disciples”. Francis wrote: “We are asked to obey his call to go forth from our comfort zone in order to reach all the ‘peripheries’ in need of the light of the Gospel” (EG 20).
One of these peripheries is the Deaf community. In his most recent encyclical Fratelli Tutti (We are all brothers and sisters), Pope Francis demonstrates how we are to “rebuild our wounded world by imitating the Good Samaritan” (FT 67). “We cannot be indifferent to suffering and we cannot allow anyone to go through life as an outcast” (FT 68). People with disabilities, in particular, “feel that they exist without belonging and without participating. Our concern should be not only to care for them but to ensure their ‘active participation’ in the civil and ecclesial community” (FT 98).
While spiritual and pastoral care for the Deaf community remains an important outreach, many Deaf people are unemployed and poor. It was decided by the Catholic Deaf community to start a sewing project for Deaf women.
Fr Mark James OP