Chiara Lubich: CHIARA LUBICH, founder of the international Focolare Movement, has died peacefully aged 88. A major figure of 20th century Christianity, she was a woman who made unity her passion, contributing in no small way to renewal in the Catholic Church, unity among Christians and dialogue among members of the world's religions.
Thousands of Focolare members and friends in Ireland have been greatly inspired by her since she first came here in the early 1970s. During her visit to Ireland in 2004 she met President Mary McAleese, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and the Catholic Bishops' Conference. On that occasion, too, she inaugurated the movement's national centre in Prosperous, Co Kildare, with members of other churches present.
Born on January 22nd, 1920, in Trent in northern Italy, then on the border between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the new kingdom of Italy, Lubich's early years were marked by severe economic, social and cultural difficulties.
Her father became unemployed due to a collapse in his business and his unflinching stance against Fascism. Her family had to move to a much poorer quarter of her native city. The second World War saw many of Lubich's own youthful ideals crumble, including her plans for university studies in philosophy.
During the war she worked as a teacher and it was her discovery of the Gospel at this time that gradually developed into a new spirituality based on unity and universal brotherhood. Soon they were given the nickname of Focolare (hearth of a fire or tinteán in Irish) describing the warmth and enthusiasm of her community.
At times misunderstood as communist, or heretical in doctrine, or Protestant in her love for the Word of God, Lubich's fidelity to the charism she sensed God had given to her was very much put to the test. The church, which she always considered mother and protector, approved the movement in 1962, nearly 20 years after it began. Lubich never saw her movement as of a purely religious nature. Jesus was divine and human. In 1948, she met Igino Giordani, a father of a family, a well-known author and founding member of the Christian Democrat Party. He saw in her a 20th-century Catherine of Siena whose ideas would influence not only the church but also political, social, artistic and cultural fields.
Lubich considered him a co-founder with her of the movement. Indeed, years later the political and economic aspects of her intuitions resulted in a new school of economics, the Economy of Communion, and the International Political Movement for Unity.
Lubich enjoyed cordial relations with all the recent Archbishops of Canterbury from Archbishop Ramsey to Archbishop Rowan Williams.
Over time, she also came into greater contact with Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs as well as with people of no religious beliefs. Attracted by Lubich's spirit of dialogue, many of these have become involved in the movement's social and cultural projects. Lubich helped bring about a reassessment in the church of the importance of lay people, a return to scripture, a focus on unity, directions later taken up by Vatican II. Many of her seminal ideas are gathered together in a valuable anthology entitled Essential Writings (London: New City Press, 2007).
Visiting the Focolare Centre in Prosperous earlier this year, President McAleese spoke of Lubich's "simple and beautiful idea" of love as a lived reality leading to unity. Ideas such as hers, the President added, provide an antidote to the negative ideas that spread so easily causing damage, breaking hearts and lives.
Just a few days before she died Pope Benedict XVI sent her a personal letter of comfort and blessing (she knew pope Paul VI and John Paul II personally). She was visited in the Gemelli hospital by the leader of the Greek Orthodox Christians, Patriarch Bartholomew I (already in the 1960s she was an important point of contact between Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras).
Among her last correspondence were short letters to President McAleese and Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin, a sign of her love for Ireland and its people.
Chiara Lubich: born January 22nd, 1920; died March 14th, 2008