Thank you, Sr Helen, and good morning to all of you. I just want to tag on to the sentiments expressed in detail by Sr Helen and immediately also express the condolences of this Academy, on behalf of all members present and not present, to her and her family in this tough situation. If events like these preannounced themselves I think Sr Helen would probably have asked us to postpone the Plenary Session, but it wasn't possible, so we are very understanding and we sympathize with you, and also express our condolences to you.
Dear colleagues, professors and all members of the Academy and invited guests, I think Sr Helen said it all about why the theme for this Plenary assembly is on disability. She has explained it fully to all of us and justified its choice to us. I simply want to support all of that, and add the observation that it was actually Pope Francis who also invites us to consider the theme of this assembly, so disabled people as not simply people who need care, but to go on to consider how they can be considered citizens fully integrated in social-cultural life and everything of society, so not limit ourselves to caregiving for such people, but actually how to fully hasten or fashion their full integration in society, in our culture and in all forms of existence.
This essentially means that it's a way of recognizing what we all are as human beings, essentially personal beings and relational beings, that's what we are. We are personal beings because of dignity, because of the dignities everybody has, and dignities which may not, in any way, be diminished by appearance or looks or any physical or corporal appearance of any sort. We need to uphold the basic dignity that all human beings have, and also recognize the fact that we are all relational beings, we develop and live in our relationship, and anything that diminishes or, again, begins to obstacle that are things that we need to address. These two factors, being persons and being relational beings, are two things that are easily and readily affected by people in such conditions, and that's also why we want to look at it.
All of this, then, leads us to consider the fact that this meeting is not just to amass information or to satisfy our curiosity about any state or condition of life but rather, borrowing the words of Pope Francis in Laudato si’, it is to make us all painfully aware and to dare to turn what is happening to a big section of our human community, the experience of disability, into our own personal experiences and suffering and, so doing, to discover and to put ourselves a question about how we can help deal with that, solve that and make all with such conditions fully integrated in our social conditions.
On this note then we invite all of you to this assembly to share a lot of information, but not to limit ourselves to sharing information, but to feel ourselves invited to feel, and to make the experience of such people our own experiences, and see how we can, therefore, commit to making their own experiences as last as possible and in a way that does not, in any way, diminish their own lives. So we want to welcome you all to this event. Our program, as Sr Helen has mentioned, will be slightly modified on account of the present experience that she has, but everything will still take place to full satisfaction of all gathered here. Thank you again for coming, and have a nice Plenary assembly.