11/21/2009: today was, like all the other days, pretty amazing. We began the last day of the Conference with an address to us by Cardinal Angelini.. He is 93 years old,and will be celebrating his 70th anniversary as a priest next Spring. In Italian, he gave a very powerful and emotional speech about the need for the Church (all of us) to be concerned for those suffering in the world. At one point he said, he really said this, "the Church is not to be found in the great basilicas and cathedrals of the world. The Church is to be found in hospitals, rehabilitation centers. Where the sick and suffering are, there is Jesus!" After that, the leaders of the Conference asked me to present a summary of the proceedings. Following that, there was alively discussion from the audience, hearing and deaf, re: what the Church should be doing to improve the lives of deaf people and help deaf people participate more fully in the life of the Church.
Then, we left our hotel at 2pm to travel to the parish church of ST.FRANCIS & ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA, the twin patron saints of Italy.We had a follow up meeting re: future directions for our Catholic deaf community. Then, Mass at 5pm in the same church. (Every Saturday, there is a 5pm Mass for the deaf at that parish.) The Mass was celebrated in multiple sign-languages and spoken Italian. PATRICIA SLISZ & BRIAN SWATEK did some of the readings at the Mass.Following all this, was a social reception at the Catholic Deaf Center in Rome, near the church. Everyone enjoyed themselves.
This Conference came after a year of very intense planning. Like any Conference, we did not accomplish EVERYTHING. We did not solve ALL problems. We did not answer EVERY question. What we did accomplish was to have over 500 people(more than 100 deaf) from over 60 countries come together with Vatican officials to describe honestly the needs of deaf people in the Catholic Church. There is MUCH work left to do. However, it was obvious to me that the bishops and other Church officials who attended the sessions were very moved by the testimonies of so many, especially deaf people who have worked for many years in the life of the Church. I believe that from this Conference, there will be some improvements and changes made. In the next two weeks, I will post on the website for the Catholic Office of the Deaf the pages of notes that I took during the Conference. Hopefully these will give you a better picture of the discussions.
A personal note: my deaf grandparents could have never imagined that one day there would be deaf pastoral workers and leaders, meeting at the Vatican, signing to Church officials in all sorts of different sign-languages their ideas and desires for the Church! They probably certainly could not have opictured me being there. As I sat in front of the entire Conference this morning to sum up the three days, their presence and mom's face flashed into my mind. For a moment, I was overwhelmed by the sense that they were there in that room, with me. They were! Their love made all the work of getting to this day worth it.