Vatican officials say church must improve service to deaf community
While the Catholic Church no longer considers deafness an impediment to ordination, there are only 13 priests in the world who were ordained deaf, said officials of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Ministry.
Msgr. Jean-Marie Mpendawatu, undersecretary of the council, said eight of the 13 work in the United States, two minister in Great Britain and one each serve in Brazil, Congo and South Korea.
Father Savino Castiglione, a member of the Congregation of the Little Mission for the Deaf, said the problem is not one of barriers imposed by the church, but is a result of practical educational difficulties.
A deaf seminarian needs a sign language interpreter or tutor for his six years of philosophy and theology classes, something which is expensive, particularly because "it is difficult to use sign language to translate such abstract concepts" as those found in philosophy and theology, Father Castiglione said.
The lack of deaf priests was one of the topics discussed last week when the pontifical council presented the program for its annual international conference.
Archbishop Zygmunt Zimowski, president of the council, said there are more than 278 million deaf people in the world, and at least 1.3 million of them are Catholic.
"That is a lot and the church must act," the archbishop said.
Read more at Catholic News
Comments
In 30 years as an ASL interpreter I've never seen so much pub re Catholic Church and D/HH ppl. I'm wondering why NOW? Seems like it never mattered to talk about it or write about it before. It was expected as a volunteer ministry. Suddenly the church is supposed to do a 180 and see Deaf and Hard of Hearing ppl as real people? Good luck with that.
Posted by: coleen | November 29, 2009 01:01 AM