Archdiocese of Denver

R ita Weyler, of Thornton, was taking her college SATs in braille in the 1970s at a high school reha- bilitation center for students who were blind in downtown Denver when a friend told her about Catholic literature from the Xavier Society. She soon became a client for more than 50 years. Xavier Society provides free Catholic materials in braille text and other technologies. It has more than 750,000 pages of braille material such as the Mass Propers, magazine articles and religious books. One book can cost more than $1,600 to produce in braille and the entire Bible can take up 45 volumes and fill an entire bookcase because of the nature of braille text, with its heavy bond paper and raised letters. The Sunday missalette is sent to clients, like Rita, all over the world in 80 countries. Weyler was born prematurely and never had a lot of eyesight. What she had, she lost by age 5 ½. Growing up in Reno in the 1950s, she was sent to a public school and programs for people who were blind were just getting off the ground, she said. The summer of her 4th grade she made great progress with her braille lessons by putting her dolls in a chair and reading braille stories to them such as "By the Shores of Silver Lake," by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Weyler's grandmother gave her a braille Bible for her birthday in the 1980s and she cherishes it. She receives the Mass Propers from Xavier Society regularly and saves them because so much goes into each copy and they feel important to her. "If [the Xavier Society] didn't exist, blind people would be left out in the cold and couldn't participate in the mass," Weyler said. Many Xavier Society patrons are lectors at mass and are able to actively participate in their parish, like Art Yochim, at St. Bernadette Church in Lakewood. [see article on page 12] "Xavier Society helps me be more independent to get my own books," Yochim said. "It's really good to have a service like theirs." For more information about the Xavier Society visit xaviersocietyfortheblind.org. For more information about: St. Bernadette parish in Lakewood, visit stbernadettelakewood.org or the Bridge Community, visit thebridgecommunity.net. The Office of Special Religious Education is funded through generous gifts to the Archbishop's Catholic Appeal. 15 SPECIAL EDITION | ARCHBISHOP'S CATHOLIC APPEAL Xavier Society brings religious texts to blind Catholics for 121 years American Sign Language translator Glenna Cornish signs the homily given by Father Joe McLagan.

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