LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: Among traveling evangelists Nick Vujicic is a rock star. He’s packed them in in churches around the globe. This is his second visit to the Northland megachurch in Orlando—a preacher with no arms and no legs who wants no sympathy.

NICK VUJICIC: Why does a man without arms and legs have a smile like this? It surpasses the understanding of the world, because I should be depressed. I was, until Christ came in.

SEVERSON: He travels with another message: that churches need to be more inclusive of people with disabilities.

VUJICIC: To me, in my mind everyone has a disability. Everyone needs God. But definitely it is said again and again and again, we need to go out and reach out to those people who are in need.

SEVERSON: It’s not surprising that Nick Vujicic would be invited to Northland. This is a church with about 15,000 members that goes out of its way to welcome and accommodate people in need, including the disabled. One program the church offers is a class for physically and mentally disabled children.

Teacher to class: We’re going to read the Bible story that we just heard.

SEVERSON: Laura Lee Wright has cerebral palsy. She runs the program.

LAURA LEE WRIGHT: They could go into regular class, but they might not really get the message of Jesus and the message of hope, because our volunteers are trained to accommodate their special need and their conditions.

Teacher to class: Can you all show me how you pray?

SEVERSON: Unfortunately, Northland’s attitude toward the disabled may be the exception rather than the rule. Over the years, America’s millions of physically, mentally, and emotionally disabled have made great strides in the workplace, but places of worship have lagged behind.

Jim Hukill was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy when he was only two. He has made it his life’s mission to open more churches to the disabled.

JIM HUKILL: We are still very much in an infantile state with the faith and disability movement. I think that we have seen over the last decade a significant advancement, but we are nowhere near what has to happen.

SEVERSON: Places of worship and the disabled is the subject of a new book called Amazing Gifts by author Mark Pinsky. He says one stumbling block for people, whatever their faith, is that at first they feel awkward around people with disabilities.

MARK PINSKY: They say, “I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do. Should I tell my kids not to stare?” All these things are okay, and people in the disability community recognize that there’s going to be some unease, some initial discomfort. That’s okay. That shouldn’t discourage you from plunging ahead.

SEVERSON: He says it’s not that churches, synagogues, and mosques deliberately ignore people with disabilities.

PINSKY: We have a sort of “Zen of the normal” in most of America. Most of us worship with people who are like us racially, economically, and physically, and so if we don’t see people with disabilities we just don’t think about them. It’s not that we actively excluded them, because I don’t think we did. It’s just the fact that they weren’t there. If they weren’t seen, they weren’t considered, and because they weren’t there, people thought they didn’t exist.

SEVERSON: One of the 64 stories in Pinsky’s book is about Linda Starnes. She and her husband have two children, both with disabilities. Her daughter, Emily, has Asperger Syndrome, a form of autism. Her younger son, Mac, was born without a lower jaw and has lived his life connected to breathing and feeding tubes. When he was a baby the doctors recommended that the parents sign a “do not resuscitate” order.

LINDA STARNES: And so we said you know we need to talk about this. We’re not going to place that order right now. We need to pray about this, and we need to talk to our pastor, and decided that we would allow the course that God had for Mac to take place, and so we said we will not make that decision. You do everything you can for our son, and so they said this means a life on a ventilator, and we said that’s okay. We’re going to be up for that challenge.

SEVERSON: Her daughter, Emily, is now a freshman at the University of Tennessee. Mac plays the xylophone in the school band and has dreams of becoming a motivational speaker and/or a preacher.

Stanley Hauerwas, a professor of theological ethics at Duke Divinity School who has lived and worked with the disabled, says the stories in Pinsky’s book help them and those who care for them overcome feelings of isolation.

PROFESSOR STANLEY HAUERWAS: One of the aspects of disability is the kind of loneliness that it creates that you’re not sure is shareable with other people. One of the things Mark’s book does is help you share stories in a way that you recognize you’re not alone.

HUKILL: I think for people with disabilities their hunger and their desire is for someone to look past the hardware and to be able to embrace them as individuals—for someone just to share cheeseburger together with them.

PINSKY: And most of these things don’t cost money. That’s the thing that was kind of a surprise for me. It’s not just about ramps. It’s not just about elevators. It’s about attitudes and programs. It can just be asking people with Down Syndrome in your congregation if they’d like to be greeters. It says this congregation values people with disabilities and the contributions they can make. They are not just people who need help, but they are people who can help.

SEVERSON: Professor Hauerwas says caring for the disabled is fundamental to the message of Christianity.

HAUERWAS: People that you could think might have been disabled in terms of how they were depicted in the gospel, but they are seen as mad or possessed by demons and so on, and Jesus cured them. He drove the demons out.

PINSKY: There’s this wave coming demographically of people with disabilities who will be looking for spiritual homes. We’ll find people returning from the wars with PTSD, with limbs missing, and finally there’s the aging cohort of which I am a part, which is the boomers who are in large numbers aging into infirmity more or less, and the churches that are ready for that wave demographically are going to be the ones who help fill pews.

SEVERSON: Over the years, Linda Starnes has become a major force behind the welcoming nature of Northland Church. She says the bigger payoff for inclusive congregations can’t be measured in numbers.

STARNES: I think you become actually a congregation that’s more blessed, in all honesty, because you grow a heart towards being responsive to people you feel like may have needs and that you are there to perhaps serve. In the end, I believe many people realize not only am I serving, but I am receiving.

SEVERSON: And her son Mac, who can’t speak, has become a church favorite. Here he is on YouTube with Northland pastor Joel Hunter.

YOUTUBE: I look at Mac, if you had an afternoon with him you’d be totally mesmerized. You would, you would, you would because he’s like that, see? Yeah.

PINSKY: If kids see this, if kids see people with disabilities integrated and involved in the congregation, that sends a message that’s imprinted on their brains, and that’s something that’s incredible in terms of its value to the congregation.

SEVERSON: Pinsky says making a congregation inclusive for people with disabilities is more a matter of what’s in your heart than what’s in your budget.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson in Orlando.

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: Joni Eareckson Tada is a woman of many talents. She’s a bestselling author, an acclaimed artist, and an internationally known advocate for people with disabilities. Paralyzed for more than 40 years, Tada is one of the longest living quadriplegics on record. She endures chronic pain, and just a few months ago she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Tada says it’s her faith that keeps her going.

JONI EARECKSON TADA: Boy, when Jesus said in this world you will have trouble, he wasn’t kidding. In this world there will be trouble. Perhaps the gift of this cancer and pain and quadriplegia is that it forces me to recognize my desperate, desperate need of God, and that is a good thing.

LAWTON: Tada was an active, athletic teenager. Then, at the age of 17, she broke her neck in a diving accident in the Chesapeake Bay. Her spinal chord was severed, and she became paralyzed from the shoulders down. She has limited arm motion but can’t use her hands or her legs. Immediately after the accident, she was angry and depressed and begged friends to help her commit suicide. Ultimately, she says she found peace when she committed her life to God.

EARECKSON TADA: God is that big, and he’s that good, and his grace is that sufficient.

LAWTON: Tada wanted to help others with disabilities and in 1979 began a ministry called Joni and Friends, offering support to disabled people and their families.

EARECKSON TADA: Disabilities are on the rise. Autism, Alzheimer’s—there’s not a cul-de-sac in America that’s not impacted somehow with a family who has a child or an elderly parent with a disability.

LAWTON: Because of her efforts, Tada was appointed to the National Council on Disability. She worked for passage of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act, passed in 1990, which sought to make America more accessible. But she feels more is still needed.

EARECKSON TADA: You can provide for the curb cuts, provide for the elevators and the ramps and the Braille and the TTY machines, but it’s going to require a change of heart in our society.

LAWTON: Joni and Friends provides resources to help local churches reach out to people with special needs and their families. The goal is to help disabled people find dignity and purpose in their lives. The ministry holds family retreats around the country and has begun special sessions called “Wounded Warrior Getaways” for armed service members injured in combat and their families.

Joni’s husband, Ken, knows all too well the toll disabilities can take on a family. He and Joni married in 1982 and have become mentors for other couples living with disabilities. Now retired from teaching school, Ken helps Joni with the international component of their ministry, called Wheels for the World, which provides wheelchairs and walkers to disabled people in poor countries.

KEN TADA: To give the gift of mobility to someone who has never walked before and to watch how it not only changes that person’s life, but the whole family—that’s been huge.

LAWTON: In one ministry project, prisoners at a California penitentiary make special pediatric wheelchairs that Joni and Friends distribute around the world.

Tada herself has become a living testimony that a disability doesn’t have to be, in her words, “the end of the world.” She has told her personal story countless times in speaking engagements and through the more than 35 books that she has written, including her newest one, A Place of Healing. Her autobiography called Joni has been translated into more than 20 languages, and in 1980 Billy Graham’s Worldwide Pictures turned it into a feature film.

Despite the wheelchair—in fact, because of it—Tada has been all over the world, and she’s learned how to compensate for the paralysis. Tada taught herself how to draw and paint using her mouth. Music and art, she says, give her a vibrant creative and spiritual outlet.

EARECKSON TADA: Yeah, I do many things—mostly family retreats, working at Joni and Friends for others, but boy, my artwork and my music is something that comforts my own soul, that encourages my own soul. That’s a blessing. Since I’m dealing with more pain I work more now with pencil rather than brushes. Brushes are just a little too heavy. Pencils are lighter.

LAWTON: Tada is open about her struggles. Just getting out of bed in the morning is a two-hour ordeal. A series of friends come in and help get her ready for the day.

EARECKSON TADA: And there are many days, honestly, when I can hear my girlfriends come into the front door, and they’re running water for coffee in the kitchen. I know they’re going to be in my bedroom in a few minutes with a happy hello, and I just don’t have the strength to welcome them, and so while they’re still in the kitchen I’m praying oh, God, I have no strength for this day, but you do.

LAWTON: Tada talks often about the reality of suffering—a difficult message in what she calls America’s culture of comfort.

EARECKSON TADA: We want to erase suffering out of the dictionary. We want to eradicate it, avoid it, give it ibuprofen, institutionalize is, divorce it, surgically exorcise it, do anything but live with it.

LAWTON: Even after all these years in the wheelchair, she says some fellow evangelicals still tell her if she had more faith God would heal her.

EARECKSON TADA: But sometimes healing doesn’t come, and you’ve got to live with it, and when you do you really do learn who you are. God uses suffering. He lobs it like a hand grenade and blows to smithereens these notions we have about our self and who we think we are. Blows it to smithereens until we are left raw, naked, and we have to let suffering do its work.

LAWTON: These days it seems like there is a lot of that work. After breast cancer surgery, Tada is undergoing chemotherapy, which has siphoned off much of her trademark vitality.

EARECKSON TADA: It is very hard to go on. I mean privately I’ve wondered, gee, Lord, is this cancer my ticket to heaven? Because I sure am tired of sitting in a wheelchair, and my body is aching, and I’m so weary. Could this be my ticket to heaven?

LAWTON: Her motivation for persevering, she says, is all the people she’s able to help.

EARECKSON TADA: I need a reason to get up in the morning, and my big reason is to help other families like mine, other people with disabilities, other special needs moms and dads, to encourage them and strengthen them, to help them want to face life head on.

LAWTON: She says she won’t allow herself to spiral into doubt and despair.

EARECKSON TADA: I’m not going to go there. I’m not going to go there. I went down that dark, grim path when I was a teenager and first broke my neck and wanted my girlfriends to bring in razors to slit my wrists or their mother’s sleeping pills or whatever. I’m not going to go down that path again. It’s too horrible.

LAWTON: Ken Tada says it’s been hard watching his best friend go through so much.

TADA: I’ve often had several guy friends of mine who I’ve said, you know, if I ever go to war I’d want those guys in my foxhole. The first person I’d want in my foxhole is my wife.

LAWTON: He says the cancer has brought them closer to each other and to God.

EARECKSON TADA (singing): “I surrender all, I surrender all.”

TADA: Yeah, we’re depressed. If we didn’t have God to turn to, I don’t know. I mean, I certainly understand some of the other alternatives, but boy, I tell you, you know, you just kind of grab on with both hands and just hold on as tight as you can, because that’s the only hope.

LAWTON: I asked her a question she’s been asked over and over again: How can you just keep believing in a God that would let all that happen?

EARECKSON TADA: I pray a lot, and I sing a lot. I sing because I have to sing. There’s something good about talking to yourself, reminding yourself of things you believed in the light but you’re so quick to doubt in the darkness. And I’ve seen too much of the light to not choose the Lord.

LAWTON: I’m Kim Lawton in Agoura Hills, California.

Father Richard J. Curry, S.J., is no stranger to the world of acting. The 66-year-old Jesuit, who was born without a right forearm, earned a PhD in theater from New York University, and he’s even played a psychiatrist on the television detective series “Monk.” But he is perhaps best known as the founder and artistic director of the National Theatre Workshop of the Handicapped, a 32-year-old nonprofit theater arts training institution for persons with physical disabilities, currently based in New York City and Belfast, Maine.

Photo by Michael Soukup

Six years ago, Curry reached out to disabled combat veterans, especially amputees, and began the Writers’ Program for Wounded Warriors, holding workshops for soldiers to tell their stories in dramatic monologues and in the process to begin to heal the psychological, emotional, and spiritual wounds of war.

“A dramatic monologue is not just journalism,” says Curry, “not just retelling their story. In fact, it is telling their story for a very specific purpose, a very specific response that they want from the particular audience.” It is an act of the imagination, he explains, and feeling the audience’s response, says Curry, can be a source of great healing. “It opens up a validation that probably would not have been there before,” he explains. The wounded warrior realizes that he is “part of a larger universe of love,” says Curry, “and once you get the wounded warrior in touch with that, then you can see that the healing can begin.”

Because of his own physical disability Curry says he had to seek special permission from Rome this year before he could be ordained a priest after more than 40 years as a Jesuit brother (he joined the Jesuits in 1961 at the age of 19). When veterans “started coming to me and asking me to be, in fact, responsive to them as a priest, it profoundly affected me,” he recalls. He realized, he says, that “they’re asking for a disabled priest.” This fall, as a new chaplain-in-residence at Georgetown University, Curry launched an Academy for Veterans to minister “in a sacramental way” to those who have lost limbs and are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Curry hopes to work with disabled veterans from military bases and hospitals in the greater Washington area and to expand his writers’ program. He is incorporating the Georgetown University community into his plans and has set up both a mentoring program with Georgetown undergraduates and a program for law and business students to help disabled veterans with legal and financial matters.

His mission, says Curry, is to let wounded veterans know there is life and joy after disability, and he acknowledges that he brings to his work the particular values of St. Ignatius of Loyola, who founded the Jesuit order in 1534. “Eloquentia perfecta, the perfection of eloquence, is the end result of Jesuit education,” Curry says. “The student can stand on his or her own two feet and defend what he or she believes. This is what I wanted to do for the disabled, who have been ignored for so long. People never asked them what they thought or how they felt, so once you have empowered a disabled person artistically, you have in fact empowered a disabled person.”

Christa Coronado, a junior at Georgetown University, was an intern at Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.

Reverend BILL GAVENTA (Boggs Center on Developmental Disabilities): In every faith community there is a scriptural basis for welcome and hospitality. But you’ve also got congregations who live in cultures where people with disabilities have been hidden and ostracized and devalued in lots of ways, and too often faith communities sanctify prejudices in the community rather than challenge them. It shouldn’t be easier to get into a bar than a church.

SAFIYYAH A. MUHAMMAD: When I think back as a child, I don’t remember seeing anyone like Sufyaan at the mosque, no one. I don’t remember any children or adults like Sufyaan attending the mosque, and I don’t think that was by mistake. I think that we parents look at it as not just a distraction but an embarrassment. But he deserves to pray. He has a right to faith, too.

Well, the first time that Sufyaan attended the mosque not only was he talking out loud and using his hand motions, but he was running in and out of the rows. It wasn’t received well. There were whispers, there were talk: “He’s a bad kid. He obviously wasn’t raised right. That’s bad parenting.”

Imam W. DEEN SHAREEF (Masjid Waarith Ud Deen, Irvington, NJ): I think the primary challenge is a lack of knowledge, because sometimes families conceal the information that they have family members that have disabilities. Sister Safiyyah Muhammad made us aware of her son’s disability in terms of autism, and she’s made it almost like a quest for our community to become more knowledgeable about it.

SAFIYYAH: When the Koran refers to the believers it doesn’t say the believers except for the insane. Love for your brother what you want for yourself, and Sufyaan, autism or not, is considered a brother to another person who does not have autism.

Rev. GAVENTA: I’ve had families say to me, “I’ve fought all week to get my kid included in a school or whatever. I shouldn’t—I don’t want to have to fight when it comes to Sunday morning or Saturday.”

CYNTHIA MCCURDY (to her children): Are you guys ready to go?

In other families that I’ve talked to there’s been numerous instances of “We don’t know what to do with your kind” or “Please don’t come back.”

(to daughter Katie): Okay, that looks good.

FEMALE VOICE AT CHURCH: Katie’s going to definitely do the sign language.

KATIE: Hello.

WOMAN: You look nice in your white top.

KATIE: Why thank you.

BOY: How you been?

CYNTHIA: We noticed that people with disabilities were missing from communities of faith. It wasn’t that people with disabilities didn’t exist. They just weren’t being invited and welcomed into their houses of worship.

KATIE: I carry the banners that like, kind of like a spirit does too. And the Gospel, I have to read the Gospel. I have to study for it. Then we read the Gospel.

Pastor MARK SINGH-HUETER (St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Exton, PA, addressing congregation): We begin in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Dear Lord, forgive the things I have done…

Everything’s presented in a way that really is much more interactive, whether they’re in the choir, whether they’re part of the skit, whether they’re doing readings, and so everybody gets to use their gifts and get involved.

BILLY: I’m reaching up to the Lord because of my voice. I can sing unto his praise.

SUSAN: Frankly, I would not feel comfortable just walking into any church for a service because of the noisiness, and we usually make some kind of a scene—like we are right now, pulling hair—where here, you know, we really don’t have to worry about it. A lot of times when we’re out in public, Joshua does experience a lot of stares when we go into restaurants and things. So we find that we really don’t go to a lot of the public places. This is wonderful, because not only does he get time to come and be exposed to worship, but I get to come back to church, too.

CYNTHIA: When I see individuals of all abilities feeling free to be themselves and to worship as God has intended them to be, I feel the Holy Spirit moving within everyone.

Rev. GAVENTA: Faith communities have gone from doing nothing to doing special things for people, with this sort of special services for special people and special religious education, to then hearing families and others say don’t do anything special for us. Just include us.

Rabbi DAN GROSSMAN (Adath Israel Congregation, Lawrenceville, NJ): Several families moved to this community because we make it an inclusive community. I don’t want a synagogue that doesn’t let Jews in. Isaac was blind—in most synagogues he couldn’t find his way around. Moses stuttered—in most synagogues he couldn’t read from the Torah that’s called the Books of Moses. So you got to create the environment where everybody has a place, and if you start with that notion, then everything flows from there.

SAM’S MOTHER: We were at a different synagogue. Sam’s autism, you know, outbursts occasionally, was really not tolerated. So we came here. Immediately the whole synagogue accepted us. He learned Hebrew and loves to be on the bema.

Rabbi GROSSMAN (signing): So when I come back in the summer, in August, we can study together? Alright. You’re a good guy.

BOY AT SYNAGOGUE: Not many deaf people read the Torah. My dad always said to me I am better reading in Hebrew than English.

Rabbi GROSSMAN: We have a reputation that we are a special needs community, when in fact that probably only makes up a small percentage of the active community in the synagogue. I think it defines the synagogue because it simply doesn’t happen elsewhere.

WOMAN: I happen to be married to a gentleman who’s a quadriplegic and in a power wheel chair. There’s lots of ways of creating access to the bema. But what’s really special to him is that everyone uses the ramp. That’s the first time he’s felt—when he’s been in a synagogue, accessible or not—where he’s felt there’s true inclusion.

Rabbi GROSSMAN: There are seats that can accommodate wheelchairs in a row, so you’re not stuck in an aisle separate from everybody else. There are large print prayer books, Braille prayer books. Most synagogues have Torahs usually higher; you have to lean forward into it. By having them free-hanging like this anyone can roll up literally in a wheelchair, take the Torah, lift it, and come out with it.

FATHER: What would happen to these kids if a synagogue like this wasn’t around?

Rev. GAVENTA: If everybody is created in the image of God our community should be a reflection of the diversity and the wonder of God’s creation.

Rabbi GROSSMAN: I’ve had so many people over the years say it feels like they’re part of a real, living community as opposed to an artificial community where only perfect people are sitting here.

SAFIYYAH: Some people would say what is he getting out of it? Why is he here? He’s a distraction. We need prayer more than he does.

But the fact is who’s to determine who gets more blessings and who doesn’t?

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Forty-two years ago, in a village south of Paris, a French-Canadian named Jean Vanier created a home where the mentally disabled could live in dignity and where others could learn from them the value of sharing and acceptance. There is now a worldwide network of these communities called L’Arche, the French word for Arc, a symbol of hope. Vanier rarely leaves his community in France, but he did recently come to Chicago, as Judy Valente reports.

JUDY VALENTE: These are the people Jean Vanier calls his friends. People he describes as “pushed aside, with broken hearts.” People, he says, who have “transformed” him.

JEAN VANIER (Founder, L’Arche House): My life is to live with them — to be with those who are fragile, vulnerable and weak. I’m not sure that we can really understand the message of Jesus if we haven’t listened to the weak.

JEAN WILSON (Core Member, L’Arche House): He’s my one man and my one man only — I love this man.

VALENTE: Those who came to greet him included the residents and staff of the L’Arche house he helped establish in Chicago. The mentally challenged here are called “core members” because they represent the “core,” or heart, of L’Arche.

Mr. VANIER (at microphone with Elbert Lott): We’re different. We have different backgrounds. But we’re together.

VALENTE: Vanier introduces core member Elbert Lott, who has a mild mental disability.

ELBERT LOTT (Core Member, L’Arche House, at microphone): I had a hard time. Rough times. Barefoot boy, down south. My father be mean to me.

Mr. VANIER (quoting Mr. Lott): “My dad was mean to me.”

Mr. LOTT: He was.

Mr. VANIER: (to Mr. Lott) Because Dad wanted a son who could maybe do big things, and he looked down upon you.

Mr. LOTT: He did.

Mr. VANIER: He was mean to you.

Mr. LOTT: He was. Well, all that now behind me now. Here I am, famous.

VALENTE: Jean Vanier talks about the loneliness of people who are different — how they can feel unwanted, unloved, and therefore unlovable. But, he says, the weak and wounded have a “secret power” to touch us. And that by opening our hearts to them, we become more human.

Mr. VANIER: We become more human with two realities. One, as we discover that we are able to love people — and when I say love people, it means to see their value and their beauty — and that we can love people who have been pushed aside, humiliated, seen as having no value. And then we see that they are changed. And at the same time, we discover that we too are broken, that we have our handicaps. And our handicaps are around about elitism, about power, around feeling that value is just to have power.

VALENTE: Before coming to L’Arche, these people were in institutions, or on the streets, or in families that couldn’t care for them or didn’t want to.

Mr. VANIER: The question is not just believing in God, but believing in human people, believing in ourselves, believing in ourselves as children of God and that we are called to see people as God sees them, not as we would like them to be.

VALENTE: The son of a French-Canadian diplomat, Vanier served in the British Royal Navy during World War II, then he taught philosophy in France. He has never married. For a time, he considered the priesthood. But in 1964, he found his calling, opening the first L’Arche home in a small village south of Paris.

LINNEA FIELDS (House Coordinator, L’Arche House, to Chris Abri): And where are these mugs going?

CHRIS ABRI (Core Member, L’Arche House): Jean Vanier!

Ms. FIELDS: Jean Vanier!

VALENTE: The Chicago L’Arche community owns a home on the city’s west side. The core members, with the help of the assistants who live with them, have prepared gift packages to distribute during Vanier’s visit to the city. Some have met Vanier during his previous travels.

VALENTE (to Ms. Msall): What’s he like?

CHRISTIANNE MSALL (Core Member, L’Arche House): He’s a wonderful man.

VALENTE (to Mr. Lott): What did you talk about?

Mr. LOTT: Well, he say — I say, “He ‘da man.” And he say, “No, I was the man.”

VALENTE (to Ms. Wilson): What will you say to him when he comes?

Ms. WILSON: Come on in, we’ll give you something to eat and drink.

Mr. ABRI: I’m very, very excited to meet Jean Vanier.

VALENTE (to Mr. Abri): Why?

Mr. ABRI: Because I like him, because he’s a big tall guy and got gray hair that I like.

VALENTE: Most of the core members have outside jobs. Here, they live family-style, helping with chores and with the cooking. The homes are grounded in the Catholic faith, but core members don’t have to be Catholic to live there. Vanier refers to L’Arche communities as “little places where love is possible.”

Ms. FIELDS: They know this is their home. I’ve seen the core members grow in their self-confidence a great deal.

VALENTE: But these small communities are not without their problems.

Ms. WILSON (to Mr. Abri): Chris, get the cups! What’s the matter with you? Gee whiz.

Mr. VANIER: There are explosions, there can be violence, there can be conflicts with other assistants. There’s a sort of constant paradox that through all this suffering and pain and fatigue, at the same time we are seeing incredible beautiful things. That is to say, people who are transformed and we are beginning to sense that we ourselves are transformed.

Ms. FIELDS: I think the prayer time is what sets us apart. That’s what drew me to L’Arche, the spirituality.

And, the core members give us a great deal of insight. They’ve taught me many, many things. I’ve learned generosity. I’ve learned just how giving each one of the core members are with their selves, and their time and how forgiving they are.

Core Members, L’Arche House, praying: Jesus, we thank you that you’re here with us now.

VALENTE: Prayer, says Jean Vanier, is really about listening.

Mr. VANIER: Prayer is a sort of opening of a door to something, which gives meaning to all the pain of the finite. And yet it’s something we can just rest in. I think fundamentally, prayer is to rest.

ELBERT LOTT (at microphone, introducing Jean Vanier): He ‘da man.

VALENTE: The 77-year-old Vanier was in Chicago to accept a lifetime achievement award. He dressed for this occasion as he always dresses: in an open shirt and his trademark blue windbreaker.

Mr. VANIER: People with disabilities are not in rivalry and competition. What is their cry? Their fundamental cry, which I had the privilege to hear, is a very simple question: “Do you love me? Do you want to be my friend?” So that’s what L’Arche is about. It’s becoming a friend.

VALENTE: Vanier told this well-heeled audience that generosity is good. But he challenges people to go beyond “giving.”

Mr. VANIER: Generosity must flow into an encounter, a meeting. But a meeting must go even further. It’s not just “tell me your story” — a meeting must grow into a friendship, and a friendship must grow into a commitment – because you are my brother, you are my sister.

VALENTE: Vanier expects L’Arche to thrive long after he’s gone. People will continue to be called to these communities, he says — not because of anything he’s accomplished, but because their hearts have been touched by the weak and rejected.

Mr. VANIER (at microphone): Living in community — L’Arche — it can be painful. But it’s super. I never understand why everybody’s not there. This is my problem. We have fun together. We laugh, we sing together. It’s great!

I can say that we have seen people rising from the dead — who arrived in there closed up in their anguish, their angers. And then discovering peace.

VALENTE (to Mr. Vanier): What’s left to be done in your life?

Mr. VANIER: Ah. To die quietly.

VALENTE: But on this day, he’s content to enjoy life — with his friends.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Judy Valente in Chicago.

ABERNETHY: There are more than 130 L’Arche communities in 33 countries.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Caring for the disabled has long been a priority for people of faith, but sometimes that care means sheltering those persons from the outside world. Some advocates argue that many of the disabled would be better off if they were more integrated into society — in group houses, for example. In Chicago, the Sisters of Mercy disagree with this. They say that by reaching out to the community, they’ve been able to provide the supervision — and the programs — that allow their residents to lead happy and challenging lives, right where they are. Judy Valente reports.

JUDY VALENTE: This group of teenagers is being entertained by some of the residents of a large home for the mentally and physically challenged. The performers have Down’s syndrome. They function at a third-grade level.

Unidentified GIRL: It was touching. I wanted to cry, knowing they’re mentally challenged.

VALENTE: The place is called Misericordia — Latin for “heart of mercy.” Most of the residents can’t perform like this. Some of them can barely move.

Unidentified THERAPIST: Turn the can crusher on for me, David.

VALENTE: Misericordia tries to provide dignity, even for the most severely disabled. In this recycling program, David Nelson touches a large button, activating a machine that crushes a can and drops it into a bin. This is David’s job.

Unidentified THERAPIST: He gets to use his hands and his eyesight, and the sound. It’s a benefit to him because he gets enjoyment out of working. And it’s like when we go out to work and we enjoy our job. He enjoys his job.

VALENTE: While states have largely taken over the funding of programs for people with special needs, it still falls to religious organizations to care for many of society’s most vulnerable people.

Sr. MARY CATHERINE MCDONAGH (Sisters of Mercy, Misericordia): We’re helping people pay attention to a group that deserves not to live in a back room somewhere, but to have a quality of life.

VALENTE: The Sisters of Mercy run Misericordia, which accepts both Catholics and non-Catholics. For the lay staff and volunteers, there is one important requirement.

Sr. ROSEMARY CONNELLY (General Manager, Misericordia): We want them to be people of compassion. We don’t want them to be feeling sorry for our children and adults. We want them to believe in our children and adults, that they not only have a right to life, but one worth living.

VALENTE: That means having programs for them, because Misericordia has more than 500 residents functioning at many different levels. This was once an orphanage. When it closed in 1976, the Chicago archdiocese turned it over to the Sisters of Mercy to care for people with disabilities. Sister Rosemary wanted to make sure it would not become a warehouse for the unwanted.

Sr. CONNELLY: I was determined that they were going to get out of bed. So I called hospitals and I called universities and I asked for help. I told them that we have all these little children and we have no program. So the universities and the hospital said, “You create the programs and we’ll come to you.”

VALENTE: The residents aren’t all children. Some have spent most of their lives here.

Sr. CONNELLY: They would never again spend their whole days in bed. You’ll see every program imaginable. And you’ll see it done creatively, lovingly, and generously.

VALENTE: Misericordia gets $30 million a year from the state of Illinois. But it raises another $10 million from the Chicago community. That support — financial and political — has made the difference.

Sr. CONNELLY: Too many places are too ready to say, “The state doesn’t pay for it so we don’t do it.” Maybe that’s one difference between Misericordia and other places. We say, “The state doesn’t do it, but we’ll do it, and we’ll do it by reaching out to people and asking for their help.” And I’ve never been refused.

VALENTE: With the help of corporate sponsors, the annual one-day outdoor festival, held on the Misericordia grounds, raised $800,000 last year. There are also candy days, golf outings, and other events. The money helps to support Misericordia’s bakery and its restaurant. Both operate at a deficit, but they give the higher-functioning residents a place to work.

Sr. CONNELLY: They are loved, they are cared for, they are challenged as much as they can be challenged.

Sr. MCDONAGH: Meg is actually laying on her stomach right now on this equipment to help her get a chance to practice raising her head and stretching her arms. It gives her a chance at exercise. She’s lifting her head because she’s interested in what’s going on, and she loves seeing people.

Sr. CONNELLY: Working at Misericordia is extremely difficult. It is work that demands complete unselfishness.

VALENTE: Misericordia faces challenges of its own. For one thing, the religious sisters who have made it a success are aging, and there are few sisters to replace them. And the trend in caring for people with special needs has been away from large institutions, to independent living in neighborhoods.

Sr. CONNELLY: We can provide opportunities that no isolated house could ever provide. They have art, they have music, they have swimming, they have a health club. They have all kinds of activities. And that really enhances their lives.

VALENTE: This is Terry Morrissey. He was born without fingers or toes, and with an elongated head. His job, every day, is to cut newspaper into thin strips. Others will process the paper, and make it into papier-maché masks. Terry says he was “born lucky.”

TERRY MORRISSEY: One of the most wonderful gifts God has ever given me is the gift of my friendships.

VALENTE: An outgoing man, who has been here since he was a child, Terry is known as the mayor of Misericordia.

Mr. MORRISSEY: They call me the mayor of Misericordia because I’m one of those hot guys that gets in on parties. I really enjoy life here.

Sr. CONNELLY: One time a doctor came in. We walked around and he said, “You spend a lot of money on these programs?” I said, “Yes, we do.” He said, “Do you think these kids are going to go out and be productive?” I said, “Doctor, if they die tomorrow, but today was worth living, I think it justifies what we’re doing here today.”

VALENTE: This is Peter Marcucci. He performs only simple tasks, like blending the paper that will be used to make the masks. But he is also a painter. This is his work. At a recent charity auction the artwork produced by the residents here raised $50,000.

Mass is said every day, and is well attended. This is the Saturday mass, which family members also attend.

Sr. CONNELLY: I do believe the children and adults generally have a very, very rich faith life. I don’t think many of them ask, “Why am I a person with mental disabilities?” They know, somehow, this life is but a brief moment in time, and the best is yet to come. They know that for many happenings in life there are no answers. But there are answering people. People who care about them, who love them, who respond to them.

VALENTE: Hundreds of families are waiting to get their children into Misericordia, because so few of the residents ever want to leave.

Sr. CONNELLY: Our whole philosophy is, we don’t take this child from you, we share this child with you.

VALENTE: The families are expected to volunteer; there are 7,000 people in the database. They are asked to pay only what they can, but also to assist in fund-raising. For them, Misericordia provides comfort. Julie Harrington’s family brought her here in 1988. She is now 44 years old.

(to Julie Harrington): How do you like living here?

JULIE HARRINGTON: I love it!

MARIAN HARRINGTON: It just means peace of mind. The greatest gift any family could have is to know your child’s been taken care of so wonderfully.

VALENTE: Among the more severely disabled, early death is not uncommon.

Sr. MCDONAGH: We’ve never had an easy time letting go of any child.

Sr. CONNELLY: How many of us will touch people the way they touched? Because there is such a beauty about them. They’re so accepting and loving and tolerant of us. It’s a beautiful gift they give to people.

VALENTE: But what is the future for Misericordia? The Sisters of Mercy number only a quarter of what they were 40 years ago.

Sr. CONNELLY: The reality is that we are not the future. And it’s a hard reality because religious sisters have made a wonderful contribution, not only to the Church but to human services. We have had the freedom to be available, completely, because we don’t have the pressure of a family.

VALENTE: When the sisters are gone, it will be up to the lay people they have trained to carry on their commitment to caring for people with special needs — people like Terry Morrissey.

Mr. MORRISSEY: I love being the mayor of Misericordia. I think it’s one of the most challenging, one of the most responsible jobs I’ve ever had in such a long time.

VALENTE: For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Judy Valente in Chicago.

ABERNETHY: For its 550 residents, Misericordia has 1,000 full- and part-time employees and 7,000 volunteers in its database.

BOB ABERNETHY (anchor): Now, ministering to the deaf. In this country, more than 25 million people suffer some hearing loss, and two million are profoundly deaf. How do they worship? How can a worship service be meaningful without music and speech? In Chicago, Judy Valente visited a deaf congregation and its remarkable priest.

JUDY VALENTE: It is ten-thirty on a Sunday morning in Chicago. Parishioners are arriving for mass at St. Francis Borgia Church. Simultaneously, at a chapel right next door, these people are also coming to mass. It is their own mass. They are deaf.

Many houses of worship have worked hard to be more welcoming to people with disabilities. But the deaf prefer to worship within their own community, and to be ministered to by other deaf people.

FATHER JOSEPH MULCRONE (Pastor, St. Francis Borgia Church): It’s a hearing world. And most churches tend to be focused on hearing religious experiences: song, spoken word.

VALENTE: What goes on here is not only the mass. People arrive two hours ahead of time. Some will stay another three hours afterward.

LYNN GALLAGHER (Deaf Woman): I’m the only one in the family…

VALENTE: Like Lynn Gallagher, most of the deaf are born into hearing families. They have grown up with a sense of isolation.

MS. GALLAGHER: It was very lonely. I always felt very, very lonely. I do truly feel very much like this is my second family.

FATHER MULCRONE: There are deaf people who are angry sometimes, “Why was I born deaf?” Not so much sometimes angry as, “What’s the reason — what’s the purpose for this?”

VALENTE: At Father Joe’s church, as it is called, the pews are filling up. But the fact is that, while still in childhood, many deaf people become alienated from religious services.

FATHER MULCRONE: Your parents take you on a Sunday, and they bring you to this large building. And you go into this building. And for an hour all these people are doing this. (mouths silently). And you’re deaf and you look around, and you see sometimes people are happy and sometimes people are pondering. And you don’t get it.

VALENTE: Before the mass begins, these deaf children go to religious education class. They are taught both orally and in sign language.

Religious education teacher: God tells us always to help, help each other. Because we show love. So we’re gonna walk quietly into church now.

FATHER MULCRONE (To members of class): Good morning.

VALENTE: Father Mulcrone entered the deaf ministry because two of his grandparents were deaf. Since even the best lip-readers only comprehend about half of what they see being said, every minister in this church knows sign language. The deaf are not just attending — some are leading the service.

FATHER MULCRONE (At Mass): So I’m gonna ask Peggy to please come up and do our first reading from the Old Testament.

VALENTE: Peggy Franco, who is deaf, signs the reading.

MARY WRIGHT (Parishoner): This is a reading from the prophet Isaiah.

VALENTE: Mary Wright watches Peggy from her pew, and recites the passage aloud, for the hearing people who have accompanied deaf members of their family to mass.

MS. WRIGHT: Look around you. See, the people are gathering.

VALENTE: Mitchell and Laurel Raci, both deaf, come to mass with their daughter, L.J., who is hearing.

L.J. RACI: I do remember when they would come to church with us when I was little, and I did often wonder what they were getting out of it.

MITCHELL RACI: There was no signing and no interpreting. And I just daydreamed in church. I didn’t learn anything.

LAUREL RACI: Once there is a priest for the deaf, it’s very difficult to part with something like that. It’s just a wonderful experience.

L.J. RACI: The first time I came to Joe’s church many years ago, and saw them lift their hands and respond, it was pretty amazing. Pretty moving.

FATHER MULCRONE (to Parishioners): Now, we’re going to pay attention to the Bible.

When deaf people read the Bible, they pay much more attention to what God does, than to what God says — not because what God says is unimportant, but because what God does they can visualize.

When I started working in the deaf community I had to shut my ears off, and look at everything in terms of, not how does it sound, but how does it look?

(to Parishioners): I’ll tell you a little story …

I always have to think, when I’m preaching — can they picture what I’m saying? Preaching stories are really important, because the story allows them to picture the point.

VALENTE: But how can a church full of deaf people experience the music that is so important to many worshippers? One way is with a drum.

FATHER MULCRONE: Most deaf people aren’t gonna be able to hear an organ playing, or a piano playing. The drum gives them a vibration they don’t get out of most other musical instruments. The drum focuses them on the Hallelujah, the Amen, whatever we use that drum for.

VALENTE: At Father Joe’s Church, there is not only music, there is a choir.

FATHER MULCRONE: Music does have a poetry. And that poetry can be put into sign language. Deaf people enjoy singing, but they sing with their hands, not necessarily with their voices. The beat may be a little different because it’s the deaf beat.

A sign takes a little longer … so we could be singing “Silent night, holy night,” but they might go “siilent niiiight…hoollly niiight.”

(to Parishioners): So we go back out to share the gift of peace with each other. Peace be with you.

VALENTE: The traditional sign of peace has a special meaning at a mass for the deaf.

FATHER MULCRONE: It isn’t just that people turn around and shake the hand of the person next to them. They go out of the pews, they go see everybody else. Because it’s that real chance to celebrate, once again, what they share.

VALENTE: Some have said it is not a good idea for the deaf to be segregated — that places of worship should find ways to integrate them with hearing congregations.

Fr. Mulcrone’s response is that in his church, the deaf can be true participants, with gifts to offer. They don’t want to be pitied, or made out to be heroic, but they have lived on the margins of society.

FATHER MULCRONE: There is this hunger to know that God loves them, to know that somebody loves them. So it’s real important to feel that God loves you as much as anyone loves you, as much as God loves any hearing person.

On these Sunday mornings these people, from all over the city, have shared not only their faith, but also their, often difficult, lives. And that is what this mass means to them.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Judy Valente in Chicago.