Author: Claire Wood

Here you will find readings of The Gospel and symbol sheets for Easter season 2020.

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Here you will find a collection of Films, Videos, Symbol Sheets and Prayers made available to us to share with you. We would like to thank everyone for working with us, and we are so pleased and proud to be able to provide these resources for you. Please do join in and share with us on Facebook.

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Cristina Gangemi in conversation with Sue Miller

In this conversation, DTh student Cristina Gangemi tells SWF Director Sue Miller about her studies in empathy as a form of practice through the lens of disability theology, in conversation with Edith Stein and Susanna Wesley.

Click link above to watch full video.

 
It has been a wonderful day at the world meeting of families in Dublin our panel, which focused on the expereinces of disability in the family, was well attended by people from all over the world . This suggests a deeper awareness and interest in our ministry and demostrates the gift that story telling and disability bring to the church. In years gone by we would be the least attended in such a congress and in some cases we spoke in empty rooms with our voice not being considered important.

 
What is exciting is that this seems to be changing. Maeve and Micheal gave very powerful witnesses of thier lives asking people to see them for “WHO they are and not as a disabled person”.. the term ‘disabled person’ is a negative explanation of a life which hides the person from being who they were born to be. “We live full lives..” we were told and families gave witness to the joy of sharing and caring, highlighting how they can also be marginalised and issolated due to lack of emapthy and understanding. My talk asked everyone to think again about the negative images that are assigned to people and about the danger of stereotyping.. we are all equal because we are all different ! Unique Ability not disability.

 
Tim Kearney, the author of ‘a prophetic cry’ and member of the L’Arche community moderated our panel, asking us to think about three important questions and answer the quirie ‘ “will you be my friend.” Often a question asked by people who are disabled by negative attitudes.. Powerful stories from Maeve’s family and from Micheal ensured that we knew why and how to say yes !!!

 
As pope Francis tells us in his introduction to the family meeting “the family is the ‘yes’ to God’s love” so let us celebrate disability by understanding that each life is valued just because a person IS, and let us work to ensure that issolation and negativity is a thing of the past… it is time.. it is us. Let’s build the Church of belonging with love.

Cristina Gangemi will be presenting on a panel at Dublin this week during the World Meeting of Families 2018.

11:30am Wednesday 22/08/18 – Cristina will talk about belonging and the celebration of the lives of people with disabilities, exploring how a negative approach to disability can be transformed by love.

“I explore how a negative approach to disability can be transformed by love and a full living out of the dignity of all life through a deeper understanding of love. Through love no life is stereotyped because all love is valued.” – Cristina Gangemi

On Thursday, 11th January, Katie Hannan died peacefully at home with her family in Leamington Spa. She was a much loved member of our Hand-in-Hand group, who attended the Living Fully Conference 2016 with us in Rome.

Please pray for the repose of her soul and for her family and friends who will miss her greatly.

– Mary Holden

Everyone at Kairos send our love to all who loved Katie. We remember our time in Rome with Katie as a precious gift. Katie will remain always in our hearts and prayers.

– Cristina Gangemi

Watch Cristina Gangemi’s interview with Telecare – starts at the 14 minute mark in the link below:

Everyday Faith LIVE!

A leading expert on faith and disabilities has said that people with disabilities are an essential aspect of the Church’s life and mission, and that parishes which exclude them are “incomplete.”

“It’s important to say from the very beginning that any parish that doesn’t have people with disabilities in it, is an incomplete body of Christ…their full capacity to evangelize and catechize is impoverished,” Cristina Gangemi told EWTN News Oct. 18.

Gangemi is co-director of The Kairos Forum, and an expert in pastoral care for people with intellectual disabilities. She has partnered with the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization to host a conference on catechesis for people with disabilities.

The conference, titled “Catechesis and Persons with Disabilities: A Necessary Engagement in the Daily Pastoral Life of the Church,” will take place Oct. 20-22 at the Pontifical Urbanianum University in Rome.

Gangemi told EWTN News that “to have everybody the same doesn’t celebrate the beauty of diversity, because one thing that we’re all the same in, one true moment of equality, is that we’re all different.”

But, she said, when people with disabilities participate in parish life, it is sometimes “presumed by the priest…that they don’t have the learning capacity to be able to be prepared for First Communion or the Sacraments.”

While people with disabilities are often described as having “learning difficulties,” Gangemi said the reality is actually the reverse: “the problem is that there are lots of teaching difficulties.”

She noted that many resources used in catechetical preparation for the reception of the sacraments are not adapted to the learning styles of intellectually disabled people, who frequently learn best through action, drama, art and music.

“So we’ve got this paradox. You’ve got people with disabilities who long to receive the sacraments, who from the moment of their conception are touched by God’s grace, and so therefore are called to the sacraments, and then you’ve got this problem in parish structures where nobody really knows how to make all their programs accessible.”

Because people with disabilities often struggle to learn using traditional methods, “the presumption is they can’t be catechized.”

The heart of catechesis and evangelization is essentially “the echoing down of faith from one generation to another, from one person to another in the parish,” she said. “And as for evangelization, everybody, no matter who they are, holds the capacity to be an agent of evangelization.”

Pointing to another example, Gangemi recalled the story of a 50-year-old man with disabilities at a parish in London, who at every Mass, during the consecration or when people went up for Communion, would extend his hand toward the altar and make unintelligible sounds.

Typically the man’s caretakers would tell him to be quiet and not to make noise. However, one day as the man was watching others receive Communion, he again reached out his hand and said, “Why not me?”

“This reaching out for 40-45 years, watching everybody go up to Communion and come back again, was his longing for the Eucharist,” Gangemi said. “And if you think of what Jesus did and what Jesus said, he made a special focus on people who are left out.”

“His lament, ‘why not me?’ was no different than the psalmists and the people that were exiled. So I think that’s got to stop, my hope is that that will stop, she said.”

In 2016, Pope Francis told an Italian group that excluding anyone from parish life because of a disability is wrong, stressing that it is better to “close the door” of a parish than to exclude the disabled.

Disability catechesis, Gangemi said, is not simply about making sure people with disabilities have access to the Sacraments, but is more broadly focused on “how can we ensure that every single person, born and baptized, can be an agent of evangelization and can have the faith echoed down to them so that they can echo down the faith to others.”

“People with disabilities who become active in the Church through their own creative skills then become people that can evangelize to others and call others to salvation,” she said.

The catechetical conference was proposed in 2016 by Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Council for the New Evangelization, and approved personally by Pope Francis. Gangemi, who has a number of family members with disabilities, was invited to help organize the event because of previous Vatican conferences on disabilities she’d arranged.

So far, 420 people who work in catechesis have signed up, coming from professions and countries all over the world. Archbishop Fisichella, Baroness Sheila Hollins of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, and representatives from dioceses around the world will present methods for the catechesis of disabled people. Participants will also have an audience with Pope Francis on day two of the event, demonstrating the Pope’s keen interest in the topic.

In her comments to EWTN News, Gangemi called the conference “historic,” since it is among the first global events to address the topic of catechizing those with intellectual disabilities.

Gangemi is also partnering with the Archdiocese of Newark’s office for Pastoral Ministry for Persons with Disabilities, to launch a parish training course on catechesis for the disabled.

The goal, she said, is to engage people so as to “try to make a shift in the way we see and think” about disability, “because the Catholic Church teaches that all life is gift.”

“That’s our starting point: all life is gift,” she said, and voiced her hope that the conference would be “the beginning, and that those of us who live now will leave a legacy for those to come, that it won’t die.”

EWTN NEWS

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Bishop of Broken Bay Peter Comensoli will lead a session at an international convention to be held in Rome this month for more than 450 participants working in the area of catechesis for persons with disabilities, the Diocese of Broken Bay reports.

The Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelisation, in collaboration with the Kairos Forum for Cognitively and Intellectually Disabled People, will host the Catechesis and Persons with Disabilities: A Necessary Engagement in the Daily Pastoral Life of the Churchconference at the Pontifical University Urbiana, from October 20–22.

Recognising the 25th anniversary of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the conference, at its heart, will honour persons with disabilities and highlight the unique blessings they bring to the Christian community.

“We believe this conference will empower people from around the world to make a positive difference in their local parishes and communities,” says Australian coordinator, Dr Zachariah Duke, Associate Dean, Broken Bay Institute – The Australian Institute of Theological Education.

“It is about bringing our theology and pastoral practice into dialogue with one another – sometimes there is a disjoint between the two, and it is the hope of this conference to iron out any disjoints!”

Following on from the success of the 2016 conference, Living Fully, this year’s conference conference will hear from international experts including Archbishop Rino Fisichella (Vatican), Cristina Gangemi (England), Isabel de la Taste (France), Fr Gabriele Pipinato (Kenya) and Anne Dewulf (Belgium).

Bishop Comensoli will lead a joint session with Professor Miguel Romero (USA) on the “Celebration of the Christian Mystery – Sacraments as precious occasions for catechesis”.

“Those among us who are profoundly, cognitively-impaired live a graced humanity,” Bishop Comensoli said.

“It is for everyone to recognise that they are privileged stewards of sacramental faith because they are quite ordinarily participants in the life of Christ.”

Program highlights over the three days include exploration of prayer and the experience of catechesis, pastoral and catechetical tools enabling inclusion of persons with disabilities, protection of persons with disabilities, and an audience with Pope Francis in the Apostolic Palace.

For mor information visit: LivingFully

Watch the interview: Tutti o Nessuno. Chiesa e disabilità 23/10/2012

Watch the News Report: EWTN News Nightly

The Kairos Forum is very excited and honoured to be partnering with the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization. In October 2017, we will help deliver a global conference in Rome at the Urbaniana University. The conference will host some of the leading theologians and practitioners who work within the field of disability, theology and catechesis. The conference will gather resources from all over the world with the aim to fully engage, people who have been disabled, in the life of the Catholic Church.

The conference runs from 20 – 22 October at the Pontifical Urbaniana University and takes the theme “Catechesis and Persons with Disabilities: A Necessary Engagement in the Daily Pastoral Life of the Church”.

Pope Francis has granted a private audience to those attending the conference.

Bishops Conference Article

Pontifical Council For New Evangelisation and Catechesis 

Please do watch out for our social media invitations and follow he conference, If you want to join us PLEASE DO !!!

You can email convention2017@novaevangelizatio.va or cgangemi.kairos@gmail.com for a booking form.

Watch the interview: Tutti o Nessuno. Chiesa e disabilità 23/10/2012

Watch the News Report: EWTN News Nightly