People must meet peopleJean Vanier, Untiring Advocate for People with Disabilities was honored for his five decades of advocacy for people with disabilities by being named the 2015 recipient of the Templeton Prize.
The $1.7 million award is given annually by the Templeton Foundation to a person who “has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works.” The foundation was established by the late billionaire investor and philanthropist Sir John Templeton.
In his statement Vanier, 86, said he hoped that his receiving the prize would lead to more opportunities for people with and without developmental disabilities to meet and learn from each other:
People are healed and become more human as they enter into real relationships with others. They then discover that under all the feelings of stress, rejection and humiliation, that they are someone! Those in need and those who come to help are all being healed, and are all, together, becoming more human. Our society will really become human as we discover that the strong need the weak, just as the weak need the strong. We are all together working for the common good.
“We must start to meet: people must meet people; we are all human beings. Before being Christians or Jews or Muslims, before being Americans or Russians or Africans, before being generals or priests, rabbis or imams, before having visible or invisible disabilities, we are all human beings with hearts capable of loving.”
