Igino Giordani

On September 17, 1948, Chiara Lubich met with 54-year-old Igino Giordani. Looking for a place to live in Rome, she was advised to get in touch with this influential Italian Member of Parliament.

Giordani was well known in Italy as a Catholic writer and author of dozens of books. As a politician in the early post-war years, he was at the birth of the Christian Democrats together with Alcide De Gasperi. He gained the confidence of Pope Pius XI and then Pius XII, and was friends with Monsignor Montini, who later became Pope Paul VI. For years, he headed the Vatican journal Fides, a periodical affiliated with the Congregation Propaganda Fide (now the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples). Giordani transformed it into a high-quality journal that nourished the clergy, the main readers of the magazine, and promoted a spirit of openness to contemporary issues.

He had heard of the Focolare Movement before, but thought that it was a ‘phenomenon of post-war mystical exaltation.’ Eventually, he agreed to meet Chiara. That encounter was life-changing for both of them. For Chiara, Giordani’s appreciation meant confirmation from authoritative sources of the special nature of her ideas. For his part, the parliamentarian found in Chiara’s spiritual insights a long-sought spiritual guidance for his life. Later, Giordani, to whom Chiara gave the name ‘Foco’ (fire), would be the first ‘married focolarino’ to work closely with her and the other focolarini, thus introducing another novelty to classical notions of a consecrated life in community.

He opened for her the door to the world of politics. As early as January 1949, she spoke to a group of MPs at the Italian parliament building Montecitorio. In the early 1950s, Giordani brought Chiara into close contact with several Italian parliamentarians, as well as with De Gasperi, president of the Italian Council of Ministers, with whom she would maintain a confidential relationship until his death in 1954. The significance of the person of Giordani for the Focolare Movement was seen by Chiara herself as so fundamental that she considered him to be a co-founder.

Pasquale Foresi

One person with whom Graziella De Luca, one of the first companions of Chiara, had come into contact on her travels around Italy was the 20-year-old theologically and philosophically gifted Pasquale Foresi (1929-2015). He was from the Tuscan town of Pistoia, son of an MP for the Christian Democrats. He had become disillusioned as a seminarian, and had recently left priestly training at the Capranica in Rome. Graziella, told him about living the Gospel in the world ‘by analogy with the Trinity,’ and it made him realize ‘that the Gospel can be lived even in the Catholic Church!’

Chiara saw special qualities in this young man and asked him just a few months after their first contact, if he would like to share responsibility for the Movement with her. At her instigation, he completed his theological studies and priestly formation, was ordained in 1954, and was charged with leading the group of focolarinos.

Pasquale Foresi, also known within the Movement as ‘Chiaretto,’ played a crucial role in the difficult process of the Movement’s ecclesiastical recognition. This was through a theological exploration of Chiara’s intuitions of faith about Jesus forsaken on the cross, about the presence of Christ where two or more are united in his name, and about the unity of the Mystical Body of Christ.

He started the Movement’s own magazine and publishing house, Città Nuova (New City) in 1956, and in the 1960s brought to fruition the project of the first Focolare ‘little town’ Loppiano in Tuscany. Chiara, recognized in him the person who took the Movement from a phase of ‘spiritual light’ to its ‘incarnation,’ and later described him, alongside Igino Giordani and Klaus Hemmerle, as a co-founder of the Movement.

Giovanni Battista Tomasi

At the end of August 1949, the Bishop of Trent sent Chiara to the ecclesiastical authorities in Rome, as it seemed that recognition would soon follow, both for the Focolare communities and for the wider movement around them. To assist Chiara in the proceedings, the bishop put her in touch with his friend and confrère in the Congregation of the Sacred Stigmata Giovanni Battista Tomasi, who for 12 years had been superior general of the Congregation of the Stigmatines.

Chiara met him in early October 1949. He was impressed both by the person and the ideas of this young woman from Trent. In November 1949, he was appointed by the Diocese of Rome as ecclesiastical assistant for the Movement in Rome.

The then 83-year-old Tomasi would increasingly connect with the ideals and person of Chiara. In his letters, we soon find expressions that testify to this; he speaks of ‘our Movement’ and ‘our Ideal.’ Apart from his role as counselor in canonical matters, he would be of great benefit as confidant, confessor, and spiritual director of Chiara from 1952 until his death in January 1954.

Chiara and Tomasi set to work to obtain recognition for the new movement as a secular institute. Chiara herself, in conversation with him, came to the understanding that the legal form of a secular institute was necessary for a recognition of the Movement. However, she was also looking for something that would not tie down the life of the community too much, while Tomasi expressed concern about the resistance of diocesan bishops and Catholic Action, a widespread Roman Catholic lay association in Italy, towards a recognition of the Movement as a secular institute.

The uniqueness of this new movement was not yet sufficiently defined to distinguish it from other lay groups. In his advice to the archbishop in October 1950, Tomasi would opt for a safer middle way. He recommended that it should not as yet be recognized immediately as a secular institute but, for the time being, simply as a ‘pious association.’

However, it would take time to get to the beginning of this procedure. The Holy Office (now the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith) had started its own investigation based on the persistent accusations from Trent, blocking progress towards approval. For Chiara, it became the beginning of years of agony.

Summer 1949 – visions of Paradise

Exhausted from uninterrupted activity in the first half of 1949, Chiara retreated to the Dolomite mountains with her companions. A whole new faith experience awaited them in the mountain village of Tonadico (Valle di Primiero). From July 16, for several weeks, Chiara was immersed, day after day, in a series of illuminations that she would later be described as an ‘ocean of light.’ These were intellectual visions concerning the great mysteries of faith in the Christian tradition (the Trinity, Jesus forsaken on the cross, Mary, the human person, hell, paradise…). She communicated these in detail to her companions, making the mystical experience a collective experience. Through her letters, Chiara also shared her intuitions with Giordani.

From autumn 1949, students and young intellectuals in Milan, Turin and Rome had come in contact with the Movement, including the already mentioned Pasquale Foresi. In December 1949, Chiara invited them to Trent to spend Christmas with her and the focolarinas. It must have been an overwhelming experience as soon after, several of them would decide to form the first men’s Focolare community in Rome and, together with the first focolarinas, would become the prime movers of the Focolare Movement in its expansion.

People who want to live the Gospel

Throughout her life, Chiara stressed that she never wanted to create an organization or a new spiritual movement. On the contrary, even in the early 1950s, she firmly believed that the large group of people who shared her style of living and believing was nothing but a collection of people who simply wanted to live the Gospel seriously.

‘But who are you, really?’ was the question some ladies asked them in the mountain village of Tonadico. ‘Just people with faith,’ was Chiara’s reply. Anyone, from any group, movement or state of life, could be inspired by the community and its gatherings, without being estranged from their parish, Catholic Action, their own religious order or congregation.

Igino Giordani, in a letter from November 1949, applauded the ‘new, spontaneous emergence of forming Christian communities.’ He regarded this as a new aspect and a more subtle awareness of the Mystical Body of Christ. Not much later, he wrote that ‘the focolarini do not generate an organization around them… they are ‘in the Church, of the Church and for the Church, and nothing more than that.’ Writing to the national assistant of Catholic Action, Monsignor Urbani, Giordani offered a reassuring explanation to make it clear that there was no competition:

We have no organization, we have no statutes. We make no propaganda: as God commands, we only love our neighbor whom he places beside us in every moment. As a result, many are attracted by this and come to our meetings. We come together and talk about God. Every month, we reflect on and live a verse from the Gospel (‘Word of Life’). We first submit the explanations on this Word of Life that we distribute to the competent authority of the Church. The meetings take place in private houses, which thereby become like churches. Everyone joins in full freedom, creating a kind of community. Where the parish priests allow, we meet in parishes, because we always want to live in communion with the Church. Everyone then brings this spirit to their own environment: at home, in the office, in monasteries, in the civil service, in schools, in parliament, in the media… It is a spirit that can revive each and everyone. This spirit does not replace any organization, and does not compete with any other initiative. It simply places itself at the service of all.

Focolari

In L’Osservatore Romano of April 19, 1951, we find the first mention of the ‘focolari.’ It comes from ‘focolare’ which means ‘fireplace’ in Italian, a nickname people gave to the nascent movement in the Church. The short notice does not identify the group other than with the terms ‘community’ and ‘body.’ The focolari thus form a community, but without any new organization. These people are linked only by the bond of love. The doctrine is already there: the Gospel. The organization is already there: the Church… So it is not a movement, but the soul of all organizations and all associations. It is a spirit, a breath of new life.

It runs counter to Chiara’s universal thinking and wish to reduce the stream she had set in motion to a specific organization. Yet soon, the realization would dawn that a specific organization with its own face was manifesting itself anyway. It was Pasquale Foresi, above all, who made it clear to Chiara that the Movement could not express its universal aspirations without working from a specific institution. The ecclesiastical authorities also insisted on this. But the process of creating that distinct entity would be anything but smooth.

Michel Bronzwaer