VILLA PAPA LUCIANI

(8th September  l987)

Perhaps the villa named after Pope John Paul I could be allowed to provide some sort of answer to the question: What is a home? Primarily, it ought to be a place where love is; a place, therefore, to which one returns over and over again; a place where one is being prepared for life. This preparation concentrates our minds at Dar tal-Providenza. We must learn how best to achieve this preparation - not an easy lesson because each resident may need a different kind of approach.

So, as we struggle to provide answers, which can never be perfect, we have to do our best to provide love and care and professional help. This cannot be done without the positive support of parents, brothers, sisters, relatives and friends.

Today more and more people are aware of the service being carried out at the Dar. It amounts to a lifetime of giving and then some more; of trying, in small practical ways to touch the hearts and reach the minds of those who live here. Not an easy task, but those who come here to offer their help and to work in this particular vineyard never did so because they thought it would be. There will always be the difficult moments, but these are forgotten when the smile of the parents, despite the agony and the heartbreak, meets with the smile of one who may never learn the beauty of a poem, or appreciate a work of art, but who recognises somehow, the beauty of those who give themselves and their time so that theirs can be less restricted, more enriched.

It is a wholesome thought.

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