CHICAGO – The main focus of the work of the Emmaus Center of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv is with the developmentally disabled. But on May 28 the Emmaus Center reached out to another disabled community, the blind, with the presentation of the center’s translation of John Hull’s book “Touching the Rock: An Experience of Blindness.”
The event at Lviv’s Palace of Art gathered some 200 people, a standing-room only crowd, including the director of a union for the blind and the director of a library for the blind. A chorus of blind children, a blind bandurist, as well as blind soloists performed. According to Christina Angles d’Auriac, director of the Emmaus Center, John Hull is “an English writer and theologian who became blind at an adult age. This was the first time the Emmaus Center did something for people with special needs other than with an intellectual disability.”
The Emmaus Center has been operating at the university since 2000, organizing sheltered workshops for the developmentally disabled throughout the city of Lviv and keeping Ukraine’s public informed about the needs and also the gifts of the developmentally disabled.
When the Ukrainian Catholic University opened its new collegium, residential college, in 2012, the Emmaus Center opened a small community, located in the building. Four adults with an intellectual disability currently live with four young assistants at the Emmaus House.
“Contact with the handicapped ought to be an integral part of theological formation,” said Bishop Borys Gudziak, president of the university. Thus, the life of the Emmaus House is closely integrated with the life of the students and staff who live at the collegium, and with a small community of nuns that also oversees the pastoral care of students at the collegium.
The bishop said he considers the developmentally disabled “professors of human relations… We need the gifts they have. They don’t care if you’re a rector, a doctor, or how rich you are. What they force us to confront is the most important pedagogical question of all: Can you love me?”
The four adults of the Emmaus House take part daily in sheltered workshops that the Emmaus Center organizes. In the evening they help the nuns organize daily prayer services held at the collegium. They also participate in other activities with the students who live in the collegium.
“To encourage students to come,” added Angles d’Auriac, “Emmaus House decided to organize some international cooking workshops with foreigners from the concerned countries who were living in Lviv.” She said they have organized such events with French and Italian themes and hope for Swiss, Turkish and others.
Other disabled adults involved with the activities of the Emmaus Center help out at the university with manual tasks like making copies and badges, filling envelopes and filing, and preparing coffee-breaks for conferences. Others help in the university’s cafeteria as waiters and dishwashers, or in the kitchen. One works at a bakery in downtown Lviv and another at an administrative office of Nestle.
“Unfortunately, stereotypes against the disabled are still prevalent in Ukraine,” laments Angles d’Auriac. “But many students, professors and others have been deeply touched by the time they spend at Emmaus House.”
Further information about the Ukrainian Catholic University is available on the website of the Ukrainian Catholic Education Foundation, www.ucef.org, or by calling its offices in Chicago, 773-235-8462 or Toronto, 416-239-2495.