Let me tell you a story about one of the most remarkable young men who ever lived. This young man had been left blind in both eyes by a childhood accident. In nineteenth-century France, when this young man lived, blind children had little help and few hopes. But then a kindly priest, Father Jacques Palluy, took an interest in the lad. He was amazed at the boy's intelligence and eagerness to learn. With his parents 'permission, Father Palluy enrolled the boy in the Royal Institute of Blind Youth in Paris.

Thrust into a new and frightening environment, the boy was lonely and depressed. In…