A group of deaf and dumb pilgrims from Italy

From July 2 to 5, 2006, a group of 30 deaf and dumb pilgrims from Italy (Rome, Abruzzo, Marche) came to Medjugorje. Four other pilgrims came with them, as well as Fr. Vincenzo Di Blasio, their chaplain and interpreter, who belongs to the “Little mission for the deaf and dumb”, which was founded in the 19^th century by Don Giuseppe Gualandi. Fr. Di Blasio says that persons with this severe handicap are very open to all that has to do with sight - hence also the phenomenon of the apparitions - and this is why he already went with them on pilgrimages to Lourdes and to Fatima. This is his second pilgrimage to Medjugorje, where he is discovering Our Lady from another perspective.

Quoting Helen Keller, who was blind, deaf and dumb, he says, “The impossibility to see separates a person from things, and the impossibility to hear and to speak separates from people, and this is why deafness and dumbness is more severe than blindness.” This is why Fr. Di Blasio always tries to take on pilgrimage, together with the deaf and dumb, some pilgrims without this handicap. He says that, in this way, their experience is double: they meet God and man.

This pilgrimage was organised by “Opera Romana Pellegrinaggi”, the agency for pilgrimages of the Roman Vicariate, which is directly subject to the Pontifical Cardinal Vicar. (See: http://www.orpnet.org)