John led by example. He broke precedent by traveling outside his cloistered Vatican environs. One of his first visits was to a prison. "You could not come to me," he said, "so I came to you."
In a similar spirit, he made an unprecedented outreach to the Jewish community. Quoting Hebrew Scripture, he told a Jewish delegation, "I am Joseph, your brother."
Ignorance and prejudice tend to guide our thoughts and actions in regard to groups of people we know little about, particularly those with an illness that we like to pretend has nothing to do with ours. We may have bipolar, but the reality is that we are close relations to a group of individuals psychiatry classifies as having schizophrenia.
It is time to acknowledge what binds us rather than what separates us. It is time to make an outreach.
I am Joseph, your brother.
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