11/03/2015
Archbishop Justin Welby said: “The astonishing life and work of Jean Vanier makes him a most worthy recipient of the Templeton Prize.
“Every time one meets Jean, one has a sense of new horizons opening up, of a new vision opening before one’s eyes of what it is to be human and of what it is to be in a community.
“The L’Arche Communities that Jean Vanier founded some 50 years ago, where people with and without learning disabilities share life together, turn society’s assumptions about the strong and the weak upside down. Those the world considers ‘weak’, through their disabilities, are those who bring hope and strength lived out in community. Those who are ‘strong’ discover they need the ‘weak’. This is nothing less than the Kingdom of Heaven come to earth, as Jesus prayed it would.
“I give thanks that the Spirit of God is using Jean Vanier’s life and ministry so powerfully to challenge those inside and outside the church to think about how they relate to those around them.”