Interviewed in The Tablet

He is not among those who, as John Paul II becomes the second-longest reigning Pope in history, is calling on him to retire. “To have someone so vulnerable at the head of the Church – I think it is fantastic,” he says. Embracing vulnerability and poverty, he explains, is L’Arche’s way into the spiritual depths.

Paths taken by the ordinary able-bodied person – to pursue status and achievement as a means of affirming their worth by their own means – are not open to the severely disabled. “In order for them to live, to be fulfilled, they need relationships,” he says. “They need communion more than generosity.”