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The mystery is this, is that it is true that I have lived now for 42 years with people with disabilities, and they have taught me what it is to be human. So if this award is given to me, it is also given to you [Elbert Lott, core member of L'Arche house in Chicago]. You see, it's really important that we discover the mystery: that we are healed by those we reject. We are healed by those who are weakest. We are healed by those who have broken hearts. My role was just to welcome two people and live together, and I discovered their incredible beauty -- that hidden under the pain, under the difficulties, under their fragility was a wounded heart and a beautiful heart. And my belief that in this world of ours, which is violent, filled with rivalry, which breaks into hatred and then violence, our world has a lot to learn from those who've been pushed aside.
And I want to open this reality to other forms of disability. A friend of mine, his wife has Alzheimer's [disease]. He said, "I wanted to keep her. I didn't want to put her into an institution." So now he bathes her, feeds her, helps her, is attentive to her. And he said, "I am becoming more human. I am becoming more human."
We are in a world where so many young people are encouraged to success, power, to go up the ladder of a pyramid of power. And we know that now we are coming to the point that we have to stop this and discover that we are called to create a body where everybody, the weakest and most fragile, have their place.
What have I learned? You see, people with disabilities are not in the 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 about becoming a friend, a friend of those who had been pushed aside and had broken hearts.
Many had been in institutions. Many of those in our communities are off streets. Many have been in situations where they couldn't remain with their family. We have to be conscious that there [are], at the heart of the reality of our world, many people with disabilities.
Do you know what is happening today? I knew many in the big institutions, but we have to be aware today that many are being killed before their birth and sometimes after their birth. And so you will find that there are fewer who are children, because they've been killed. It's not just a question of fighting against [the] reality of saving life. It's welcoming and discovering their gift, because they have something to tell us: that fundamental question which every broken person in this world of ours, where [the] gap is growing between those who have and those who have not, between the powerful and the powerless, from the heart of this universe of ours is the cry of the poor. And fundamentally in that cry of the poor -- which maybe only God hears; he hears the cry of the poor -- but the cry of the poor is, do you love me? Have I a place?
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What I discovered living with Rafael and Philippe, who'd come out of an institution, I discovered their broken hearts. But I discovered also their fundamental need. [Their] fundamental need was a friend. Generosity is something important, but generosity can be the powerful who give to the powerless. This is good. This is important. But generosity should flow into a meeting, where we listen to each other: Tell me your story. Tell me your pain. Tell me your hopes, tell me your dreams.
Many with whom we live cannot speak. But you know as I know that the body speaks, tears speak, violence speaks. Their cry, their fundamental cry, is for a friend. Generosity must flow into an encounter, a meeting. But a meeting must go even further. It's not just "tell me a story." A meeting must grow into friendship, and friendship must grow into commitment, because you are my brother, you are my sister.
And we are part of a beautiful and incredible humanity, our common humanity. We were born [on] very catholic soil. We were led into communities where we meet together and live together in different Christian denominations, and now we're being led more and more into the interreligious, where we live with people of the Jewish faith and Muslim faith. To live together, to share together, to discover under the difference our common humanity. You see, my dream today, my hope and prayer is that there will rise up in the world a multitude of people yearning for peace, and they will commit themselves to becoming a friend of a broken person, and in that meeting with a broken person images come up: That we give life. That we receive life and we give life. But that means also that we have to discover the brokenness inside each one of us. We are a broken people, and our danger is to hide, and to hide our vulnerability and our poverty.
Having lived with people with disabilities, I have discovered the violence that is in me, the fears that are in me and also the prejudices that are in me. I know that I need to be healed. And the peacemakers that will rise up will be men and women who not only just want to be a friend but [who] will enter into commitment and community with those who have been pushed aside. They'll discover that they themselves are broken. The walls that separate the powerful from the powerless are within each of us, between the light that is within me and also the darkness.
I believe we have to discover a world where we discover the depths of our faiths, that God is a God of tenderness and a God of love. A God of forgiveness and a God of kindness, and that each one of us, we are called to reflect the face of God.
So I give thanks to [the Catholic Theological Union] and all of you who were kind enough to wish to give this peace prize, particularly to those who are disabled, so they can continue their role as peacemakers in a world where so frequently they are pushed aside.
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