“‘That all may be one.’ We were born for these words, for unity, to contribute toward its fulfillment in the world.”
-CHIARA LUBICH

Chiara Lubich was a renowned spiritual leader and founder of the Focolare movement, an international network that stretches across 180 countries and has hundreds of thousands of members and affiliates dedicated to fostering unity between all nations, religions and races. Ms. Lubich was a powerful force for interreligious dialogue and is widely regarded as one of the most influential spiritual figures of the Twentieth Century.

Ms. Lubich was born in Trento, Italy in 1920. She studied philosophy at the University of Venice and worked as a school teacher before founding the Focolare movement. It began with Ms. Lubich and a small group of young women, but rapidly expanded its membership and influence. Within months the movement swelled as people from all walks of life took up Ms. Lubich’s message of love and unity.

By the late 1940s, the Focolare movement had swept across Italy, and continued to spread throughout Europe in the decade that followed as Ms. Lubich focused on ecumenism and building relationships among Catholics, Lutherans and Anglicans. By the end of the 1960s, the movement had organized in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas.

The Focolare movement seeks to build peace and to achieve evangelical unity of all people in every social environment; its spirituality aims at dismantling centuries of suspicion, prejudice and other obstacles to dialogue. Today, the movement has nearly 20,000 diocesan priests and deacons who adhere to its message, and approximately 4,500 parishes in 430 dioceses have been entrusted to its care. By special permission of the Vatican, Focolare was the first Catholic organization to admit members of other Christian churches and other spiritual traditions; its members and adherents come from a broad spectrum of Christianity, such as Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant and Anglican, as well as different faith traditions entirely, including Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh and Bahá’í.

Ms. Lubich was awarded numerous honors in recognition of her ecumenical and interfaith leaderhip, including 15 doctorates across a range of academic discplinies. Her religious awards included the Templeton Prize for Religion, presented by the Duke of Edinburgh at Guildhall, as well as the Order of St. Augustine, which she received from Archbishops Runcie and Carey. In 1994, Ms. Lubich was appointed as Honorary President of the World Conference of Religions for Peace. In 1996, she received the UNESCO Peace Education Prize, and two years later she received the Prize for Human Rights from the Council of Europe for her defense of individual and social rights.

Ms. Lubich died in her native Italy, aged 88, on March 14, 2008. She was famously hailed by Pope John Paul II as “a messenger of unity and mercy among many brothers and sisters in every corner of the world.”