An Italian girl who died in 1989 at the age of eighteen is to be beatified on the 25th September this year. Beatification is an important step in the process towards sainthood and allows the person to be honoured by a particular group or in a particular region.
The Venerable Chiara “Luce” Badano was born in 1971 to Ruggero Badano, a truck driver, and his wife Maria Teresa Caviglia in Sassello [Liguria]. The family was hard-working and pious and Chiara was an open, friendly child who always cared about others, particularly the elderly.
When Chiara was nine years old, she joined the Focolare Movement, which works for unity between faiths. Though profoundly religious, Chiara was not “perfect”: she was strong-willed and, when she became a teenager, like teenagers all over the world, she argued with her parents about matters like what time she should be in at night. There were tears, too, when she failed some school exams. Chiara enjoyed walking, tennis, swimming, dancing and singing. Her original ambition was to become an air hostess but later she felt that her destiny was to become a missionary.
One day, when she was playing tennis, she experienced pain in her shoulder. Her doctor did not think it was anything serious and neither did Chiara. But the pain refused to go away and Chiara was diagnosed with osteogenic sarcoma at the age of 17.
At first she displayed a positive attitude, believing that she had a good chance of beating the disease because she was young. However, the cancer spread quickly and Chiara was admitted to hospital many times, undergoing painful surgery.
Eventually she accepted that she would die but this did not stop her helping others while she was in hospital. Of her need to rest, she said,
“I’ll have time to rest later.”
She corresponded regularly with Chiara Lubich, the founder of the Focolare Movement, and it was Lubich who gave Chiara the name of “Luce” [“Light”].
As Chiara’s hair fell out after chemotherapy, she said,
“For you, Jesus”
and when she lost the use of her legs she declared that she would rather go to heaven than walk.
Chiara’s friends visited her in hospital but soon realised that it was they who needed her and not the other way round. Chiara gave them courage and did the same for her doctors. She gave all her savings to a friend who was about to leave on a mission to Africa and said,
“I have nothing left but my heart and with that I can always love”.
She refused morphine for pain relief as it affected her lucidity and she offered her suffering to Christ, whom she referred to as her “bridegroom”. Convinced that she was going to Jesus, her last words, on 7th October 1989 were,
“Be happy because I am happy”.
With her mother Chiara had planned her funeral as a “wedding ceremony”. Two thousand people attended and she had asked them not to cry. Chiara’s tomb is now a place of pilgrimage.
Chiara “Luce” Badano will be the first member of the Focolare Movement to be beatified. Last year Pope Benedict approved a decree attributing the healing of a young boy with meningitis to her intercession.
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