Canadian Jean Vanier began from a concern about what society could do for people with disabilities, but quickly discovered what people with disabilities could bring to society
I once asked Jean Vanier, the world’s most radical philosopher of disability for the past 60 years, how he came to create L’Arche, the network of communities for the intellectually disabled that today exists in 37 countries around the world. This was many years after the founding of the organization in Trosly-Breuil, the small town 90 kilometres northeast of Paris where L’Arche still maintains its headquarters, where Mr.
Jean Vanier’s talent for staying calm while taking risks eventually resulted in the global miracle L’Arche is today – 152 communities of the intellectually disabled , as well as an even larger chain of Faith and Light support communities in 83 countries, all serving some 5,000 disabled core members. He wrote 30 books, won countless honours , and was a friend and inspiration to thousands of parents, colleagues and L’Arche residents all over the world.
Father and son watched the 1937 coronation parade of George VI from the roof of Canada House in London. The Vaniers then moved to Paris but fled to London just before the Nazis entered the city in June, 1940. They then decamped to Ottawa. The following year, 13-year-old Jean approached his father with an unusual request: He wanted to join the Royal Navy as a cadet at Britannia Royal Naval College in Devon, necessitating a dangerous journey back across the U-boat-infested North Atlantic.
It was there in 1950 that Mr. Vanier joined L’Eau Vive, a spiritual centre for students who wanted to study theology but didn’t want to become priests . He instantly formed a deep friendship with L’Eau Vive’s founder, Père Thomas Philippe, a priest of the Dominican Order 24 years his senior. “From the first time I met him,” Mr. Vanier later wrote, “it was clear to me that our Père in Heaven had given him to me as a spiritual Père at that crucial moment in my life.
By then Père Thomas had recovered his right to be a priest, and had been assigned the chaplaincy of Val Fleuri, an institution for roughly 30 men with intellectual disabilities in the French town of Trosly-Breuil.The following summer, Mr. Vanier visited Père Thomas at Val Fleuri. He also toured the psychiatric hospital outside Paris.
The longer he lived with the intellectually disabled, the more Mr. Vanier understood their deep though often hidden value. He began from a concern about what society could do for people with disabilities, but quickly discovered what people with disabilities could bring to society. “L’Arche has provoked a Copernican revolution,” a bishop in Rome later said to Mr. Vanier. “Up until now, we have spoken about doing good to the poor. But at L’Arche, you say that it is the poor who do us good.
“In 1960, the big question in France was, what sort of a society do we want?” Mr. Vanier once said to me. “Was it the society of Mao Zedong? Was it the society of Russia?… Nowadays, nobody’s asking what sort of society we want. They’re just asking the question, how can I be a success in this society? Everyone, they’re on their own. Do the best you can, make the most money you can.
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