Chiara Lubich

Chiara Lubich was born Silvia Lubich on 22 January 1920 in Trento, in the Trentino region of northern Italy, a territory annexed to Italy from Austria-Hungary only the year before. She was the second of four children of Luigi Lubich, a typesetter and small wine merchant of socialist leanings, and Luigia Marini, a practicing Catholic. The household was of modest means. Lubich trained as an elementary-school teacher and taught in mountain villages of the Trentino. She also began studies in philosophy at the University of Venice, which the Second World War prevented her from completing.

In 1943, during the Allied bombardment of Trento, she and a circle of young women companions took shelter in cellars and air-raid shelters, where they read the New Testament together. They were particularly marked by the Gospel commandment of mutual love and by Jesus' prayer for unity in the seventeenth chapter of John. On 7 December 1943 Lubich offered her life to God, taking the name Chiara in honor of Saint Clare of Assisi; that act is regarded as the origin of the Focolare Movement, known officially as the Work of Mary. The first community, called a focolare (Italian for hearth), shared material goods in common and sought to live the Gospel in ordinary circumstances. Local ecclesiastical approval followed, and in later decades the Holy See granted successive recognitions to the movement and its statutes.

After 1945 the movement spread from Trento through Italy and then internationally, developing branches for families, youth, priests, religious, and people of other churches and religions, as well as a dialogue with persons of no religious faith. Its spirituality centered on unity and on what Lubich called living Jesus in the midst of the community. Lubich traveled widely, met popes from Pius XII onward, and engaged in interreligious encounters, especially with Muslim, Buddhist, and Jewish leaders. She received the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion in 1977 and the UNESCO Prize for Peace Education in 1996, along with numerous honorary doctorates and civic awards.

Lubich remained president of the Focolare Movement until her death. In her final years her health declined. She died on 14 March 2008 at the movement's international centre in Rocca di Papa, near Rome, aged eighty-eight. A funeral Mass was celebrated at the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome before burial at the Focolare centre in Rocca di Papa. The diocesan inquiry for her beatification was opened in 2015; she has not been beatified or canonized.