Disabled Catholics are praising Pope Francis’s use of a wheelchair in public.
“To see Pope Francis having relationships, doing his papal duties” using a wheelchair or a cane, “it just reminds me of the goodness of a weak body like mine, because this is one of the holiest people in the world able to love and serve from a wheelchair,” one says.
Francis has attracted a number of positive comments from other disabled Catholics since he adopted the wheelchair in May. He has been suffering from severe knee pain, making disability part of his visible identity.
Other world leaders have gone to significant lengths to avoid being seen in a wheelchair, There are rumours Queen Elizabeth II has been among them.
“There is this belief that physical weakness yields moral or elderly weakness,” a disabled person says. “A lot of people, I have learned, view mobility aids as giving in or being lazy.”
“There’s just so much shame that keeps us in pain,” she says. She’d like Francis to speak about his experience using mobility aids.
Another says there’s “a lot of power in seeing people who look like you, and to know that you can be a leader in the church, and you can be an integral part of the church.
“But when you don’t see disabled bodies, it’s hard to imagine being a leader or having a role in the church.”
She says because the lectern and raised sanctuary area in Catholic churches are frequently inaccessible, she has not been able to serve as a lector or a eucharistic minister.
Even participating in Mass makes her feel isolated because she has to sit at the edge of the church as there’s no place for her wheelchair.
Rumours the pope’s disability might force him to resign are upsetting disabled Catholics.
The speculation “does a disservice to people who acquire disability,” says one.
“It can perpetuate this idea that if you have any kind of medical condition or disability, and you have to adapt to those circumstances, that you’re basically going to become a shut-in, … at death’s door and must give up everything that you’re passionate about.”
The church may become more attuned to things like the language they use to proclaim the Gospel, one hopes.
She’d like words like ‘lame’ or ‘crippled’ be exchanged for ‘unable to walk’.
“If churches are using offensive euphemisms, like ‘special needs’ or ‘differently abled,’ can they just use the term ‘disabled’?
“‘Special needs’ implies that there are extra needs when in fact getting into the church is a basic need.
“The word ‘special’ can also imply it’s optional.”
Others hope the pope’s public disability challenges the infantilisation of disabled people.
One aged 42 says a parishioner routinely pats her head after Mass “as if I were a child”.
“I think this is an opportunity for the church to improve its understanding and relationship with its disabled members and move disability from a paternalistic charity-based model of thinking … into one that is based more upon solidarity.”