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“Tell me your story”: the Mercy according Jean Vanier

Meeting on the Works of Mercy in Europe today

Sarajevo, Bosnia Herzegovina, 15-18 September 2016

“Tell me your story. Go out into the highways andbyways and meet people, and they will teach you their wisdom. They will teach you also what it means to be human. Not to have more power, but to be capable to listen to each other. So we are entering into a new state of humanity”. These few words could summarise Jean Vanier’s thoughts on Mercy, the founder of the L’Arche community and the ‘Faith and Light’ Movement, as expressed in an interview given to CCEE and broadcast this morning at the start of the CCEE meeting on the Works of Mercy.

With his disarming simplicity, Jean Vanier replied to questions about his experience of Mercy and how it can change history and people and provide a new outloook on the world which surrounds us.

The full version of the interview is available online at CCEE’s YouTube channel.

For his part, His Grace Mgr Luigi Pezzuto – Apostolic Nuncio to Bosnia Herzegovina currently taking part in the Jubilee event for Nuncios in Rome – sent a message, read at the start of the meeting, in which he rcalled that “to reflect together on Mercy provides the opportunity to understand that the Church in Europe, despite the socio-cultural and historical diversities which in some cases accompany us, is called to solidarity and common activity”, and how every church body can understand that “in the light of Mercy and its works, every commitment becomes service, every margin can become the centre of a mission idea, every action can be incarnated in a choerent and enlightened way”.

Finally, the Nuncio expressed his satisfaction at the decision to hold the meeting in Sarajevo, the “Jerusalem of Europe” which “through its ethnic, religious and cultural pluralism offers the opportunity for a doctrinal and practical reflection in a land which has always known the value, beauty and also the difficulty of dialogue and of mercy, in its capacity to tackle and overcome the most diverse and sensitive moments of its history, always looking to the future with trust and hope”.

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The interview with Jean Vanier was recorded in Trosly-Breuil (France) on 16 July by Raffaella Di Noia, a collaborator with CCEE.

Jean Vanierwas born in Canada in 1928. In 1942 he entered the Royal Navy College at Dartmouth. He suddenly felt a call for a different type of life and so began his spiritual search. In 1950 he decided to leave the Canadian Navy where he was about to start a brilliant career. The years which followed were, for Vanier, years of significant searching aimed at deepening his faith.

At the end of 1963, Vanier offered to help Fr Thomas, who had just become chaplain of Val Fleuri in Trosly-Breuil, a small village in the Oise region. “Val Fleuri” was a small institute which welcomed about thirty men with intellectual disabilities. Later, Vanier returned to Canada where he taught Ethics for a short time at St Michael’s College at the Univeristy of Toronto. Jean returned to Trosly and there began to learn about the situation of people with intellectual disabilities.He visited the psychiatric hospital at Saint-Jean-les-Deux-Jumeaux in a southern suburb of Paris.There he met Raphael Simi and Philippe Seux, and was deeply touched by their distress.He decided to buy a little house near the “Val Fleuri”, to welcome and live with his new companions. So Jean did not create an institution, but undertook a commitment to his two friends who “were crying out” to receive the gift of his friendship.

After a few years, other homes of this kind sprang up and Jean Vanier sent out the call for people of good will to help him.Young people began to join him from France, Canada, England and Germany, and became assistants who made the choice to live with people with intellectual disabilities.

Today, L’Arche is made up of 147 communities spread over 5 continents, with more than5,000 members.

In parallel, Jean Vanier co-founded “Faith and Light”, with Marie-Helene Mathieu, a movement which has 1,500 communities in 82 countries on 5 continents.