Some 500 disabled young people are participating in the Order of Malta’s 40th International Summer Camp, which this year is being held in the Netherlands from 10 to 17 August. Arriving from all over the world, the youngsters were welcomed in Berckt Castle in Baarlo, a village near the border with Germany. Yesterday Grand Master Fra’ John T. Dunlap came to greet the participants in the Order’s historic initiative. In the coming days, Grand Hospitaller Josef D. Blotz will also pay a visit.

As always, the summer camp offers cultural activities, workshops, numerous sporting and recreational events, but also religious celebrations and moments of prayer. A week which, according to those partaking, is especially an opportunity to create friendships that last a lifetime.

Greeting all those present, the Grand Master reminded them that over the course of the week “The Order’s young people, and the special individuals they will be with, will experience the grace that comes from sharing their lives and love with each other. This will be the personification of Psalm 139, in which the psalmist recognised that every person, no matter their physical or mental frailties, is ‘wonderfully made’, that they are created in God’s very image, that they are God’s beloved.”

This is why, added Fra’ John T. Dunlap, “the international camp for disabled young people must validate these truths for its participants.  It must join its voice to the many other sweet and kind voices that in their everyday life invite our campers – teachers, parents, friends, family, strangers, and others – to accept their belovedness as a gift, a grace from the Father, no matter their human frailties.”

Since its inception in 1984, this international camp has offered a significant holiday experience to disabled young people aged between 18 and 35, together with volunteers from 25 different countries, in Europe and beyond.

Along with this international event there are the numerous summer camps organized by the Order of Malta’s Grand Priories, Associations and voluntary bodies at a national level, both in Europe and on other continents. In Italy since 2012, the experience of international camps has been expressed in a national summer camp, which this year took place in Rocca Bernarda, in the province of Udine, from 28 July to 2 August. All the Order of Malta’s different entities contribute to it under the responsibility of the Italian Association: the three Grand Priories with their delegations, the Italian Rescue Corps and Military Corps. The holiday week includes cultural activities with guided tours of the cities near the camp headquarters, religious celebrations, moments of prayer and numerous sporting and recreational events.