By Maryann Gogniat Eidemiller

Gathered at the fireside

Focolare founder dies after life devoted to fostering unity in Christ

Catholic and Christian leaders are mourning the death of one of modern Catholicism's most influential women who founded a Church movement in the 1940s that today counts 2 million adherents in 182 countries.

Chiara Lubich, founder of the Focolare movement, a worldwide community of people who work together to live and spread the unity of the Gospels, died at the age of 88 at her headquarters outside Rome.

Pope Benedict XVI sent a telegram of condolence to Father Oreste Basso, co-president of the movement that has headquarters in Italy, praising her for a life "spent in listening to the needs of modern man in complete faithfulness to the Church and to the pope."

The Vatican's secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, celebrated the funeral Mass, which was broadcast around the world via satellite and Internet from the Roman Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls.

That the world took such notice was not unexpected for a leader whose charism wrapped the love of God around people of all faiths and even no faith at all.

"Her spirituality is that everything begins with Jesus among us," Msgr. Michael Mulvey, vicar general of the Diocese of Austin, Texas, told Our Sunday Visitor before he flew to Rome to attend her March 18 funeral.

Msgr. Mulvey was newly ordained when he met Lubich in Italy more than 30 years ago and joined the movement.

"I think what struck me first and foremost was the emphasis of living the Gospel in daily life, and then the charism of unity which I felt is so relevant to the Church today and to the ministry of a priest," he said.

Lubich founded the Focolare Movement in the shadows of World War II while she and other young people huddled in bomb shelters, praying.

She consecrated her life to God on Dec. 7, 1943, and resolved to focus on "God as the only ideal to live for." At that time, she was a 23-year-old teacher living in Trent, in northern Italy.

"While still under bombardments," she told Our Sunday Visitor last year, "we read the page of Jesus' last will, when he asked the Father 'that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you.'"

The movement's quest for unity grew from that passage in John 17:21. Then, in 1944, when she comforted a woman who lost four children, Lubich felt called to "the divine adventure" of embracing the suffering of humanity.

After the war she and statesmen Igino Giordani and Pasquale Foresi, who later became a priest, founded Focolare, which in Italian means hearth, or family fireside. It has grown to include 145,000 consecrated members and 2 million followers in 182 countries, among them many young people and families.

"Chiara would say, 'Love one another and be family.' That is the root of what we are," Msgr. Mulvey said.

In 1979, Lubich came to the priests' center at Mariapolis Luminosa, a Focolare community in Hyde Park, N.Y. Msgr. Mulvey was staying there and took her on a tour of the house. "Then just in an instant," he said, "she looked out the window and saw the beauty of nature and said, 'Here you can have instant union with God.' She said it in such a way that you could tell she was experiencing that. You could see how real she was and how close she was to God at the same time. We were truly in the presence of someone who was in God."

Branda Balli, a consecrated member at the Hyde Park community, is assistant to the editor of Living City Magazine that covers the charism of Lubich's movement.

"What was so special about Chiara is that there were no labels," she said. "There is a place for everyone. If you are Catholic, Buddhist, Muslim or just someone who believes in peace you can be part of this universal family that wants to build a better world."

"Chiara told us that everyone is a candidate to build unity. She assured us that if we love one another, and when two or three are gathered in his name, Jesus promised that his presence would be among us," Balli said.

Lubich had been ill for some time and was suffering respiratory failure. At her request, she was discharged from the hospital in Rome and sent to her home in Rocco di Papa, south of the city, where she spent her last day receiving hundreds of loved ones. In Trent, Mayor Alberto Pacher proclaimed a period of mourning, but many of Lubich's followers, Brandl said, sense a hope and a joy in their loss.

"We know she is with God," he said. "She has met Jesus."

Maryann Gogniat Eidemiller writes from Pennsylvania.