Jesus Caritas

'With the best of intentions, my friend stuck a needle in my thigh and injected me with a paralysing poison. In less than 24 hours my leg was useless. He had made a mistake. He'd used the wrong vial… I was paralysed for life.'

The young Carlo Carretto would spend the next 30 years suffering as a result of his nurse friend's mistake, and witnessing to his belief that this misfortune was also a grace from God which had opened new paths to him.

This great spiritual master shares his personal story because he believes that it is only the man or woman who has suffered who has the right to speak to others about suffering. He does not try to give watertight answers to the question 'Why does God allow suffering?' Rather, he reflects that God draws the best qualities from men and women by allowing them to suffer and he claims that the most terrible suffering of all is the quest for selfish pleasure, leading to revulsion and death.

Carlo Carretto is a Little Brother of the Gospel and lived in Beni Abbes, Algeria and in Spello near Assissi.