Blessed Chiara Badano (1971-1990)

Birth and family

Chiara Badano was born on 29 October 1971 at Sassello, a town in the Ligurian Apennines, in the province of Savona.^[9][10] Her father, Ruggero Badano, was a lorry driver; her mother, Maria Teresa Caviglia, worked as a pastry worker.^[11] The couple, deeply Catholic, had waited eleven years for the birth of this only child — a wait lived in prayer, so that Chiara was received as a long-asked-for gift.^[12][13]

Chiara's childhood was that of a normal little girl: lively, sometimes disobedient, but of a precocious uprightness. At school she was not brilliant — she even repeated a year at secondary school — but she was tenacious and loyal, so much so that her classmates nicknamed her "the Sister" for the firmness of her convictions.^[14]

An early charity

Very early on, Chiara's generosity struck those around her. At the age of four, she carefully sorted her toys to give poor children not what she no longer wanted, but what she loved best.^[15] At nursery school, she set aside her little savings "for her little Africans".^[16]

On the day of her first communion, she received a Gospel as a gift and formulated, with a child's logic that would become the programme of her whole life:

"Just as it is easy for me to learn the alphabet, I must also learn to live the Gospel!" — Chiara Luce Badano, on the day of her first communion^[17]

This sentence already says everything: for Chiara, holiness is not a distant crowning, but a daily apprenticeship, as concrete as the letters of a primer.

The movement of Chiara Lubich and the gen

In 1980, aged nine, Chiara discovered at a gathering the Focolare Movement (officially the Work of Mary), founded by Chiara Lubich in 1943 and centred on the Gospel ideal of unity — "that they may all be one" (Jn 17:21).^[18][19] The child embraced it with such enthusiasm that she soon drew her parents in. She joined the gen (short for generazione nuova, "new generation"), the youth branch of the movement, and from May 1981 took part in the great Familyfest gathering in Rome.^[20]

From Focolare spirituality, Chiara retained above all the radicality of concrete love: loving each person, immediately, without waiting to be loved in return, by making "one's life a gift". She also cherished a saying of Chiara Lubich which she copied out and pondered:

"I shall be holy if I am holy straight away." — saying of Chiara Lubich made her own by Chiara Badano^[21]

"Jesus Forsaken", the key to her unity with God

The heart of the spirituality Chiara received from the Focolare is the mystery of Jesus Forsaken (Gesù Abbandonato): Christ who, on the Cross, cries out "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mt 27:46). For Chiara Lubich, this cry is the summit of God's love and the key to all unity — it is by loving Jesus in every pain, every failure, every dereliction that we reach God.^[22]

At twelve, Chiara already wrote to the foundress a sentence that defines her entirely:

"I have discovered that Jesus Forsaken is the key to unity with God. I want to choose him as my first Spouse and prepare myself for his coming." — Chiara Luce Badano, letter to Chiara Lubich^[23][24]

For a long time this choice remained theoretical — Chiara was a fulfilled teenager, sporty, surrounded by friends. But she had put, without knowing it, the exact word on what awaited her: recognising the beloved face of Christ in the most total abandonment.

Summer 1988 in Rome and the name "Luce"

In the summer of 1988, aged sixteen, Chiara experienced at a gen gathering in Rome something that marked her deeply. She wrote to her parents:

"This is a very important moment for me: it is an encounter with Jesus Forsaken. It was not easy to embrace this suffering, but this morning Chiara [Lubich] explained that we must be the spouse of Jesus Forsaken." — Chiara Luce Badano, letter to her parents, summer 1988^[25]

On her return, sensing that a new life was beginning, she asked Chiara Lubich for a "new name". The foundress gave it to her: Luce, "Light". Lubich wrote to her that "her luminous face" revealed her love for Jesus.^[26] In Italian, Chiara means "clear" or "bright" and Luce means "light": Chiara Luce, "bright light". The name would prove prophetic.

The pain, the diagnosis, the "yes"

In the summer of 1988, a searing pain in her left shoulder, which struck during a game of tennis, alerted Chiara.^[27][28] Examinations followed one after another and, at the beginning of 1989, the verdict came: osteosarcoma, one of the most painful bone cancers and one of the hardest to treat.^[29][30]

At the news, Chiara first remained silent — a long silence of twenty-five minutes, according to witnesses. Then, having crossed the inner trial, she pronounced her yes to the will of God.^[31][32] The sporty young girl, full of life, feigned neither indifference nor easy heroism: she chose, slowly, to love.

"If you want it, Jesus, so do I"

From this decision was born the sentence that sums up her whole Passion, which she would repeat to the end:

"For you, Jesus; if you want it, I want it too." — Chiara Luce Badano, a formula repeated throughout her illness^[33][34]

She did not seek suffering for its own sake — she first said "I am young, I will pull through!" — but when it became clear that healing would not come, she did not rebel against God. She united herself to Jesus Forsaken, exactly as she had chosen at twelve. When her hair fell out under chemotherapy, she offered each lock: "For you, Jesus."^[35]

She even refused to ask for healing at the price of distance from God:

"If I had to choose between walking again and going to Heaven, I would choose Heaven." — Chiara Luce Badano^[36][37]

Refusing morphine and offered lucidity

Paralysed in the legs in the spring of 1989, nailed to her bed, Chiara made a decision that stunned her carers: she refused morphine. Not out of bravado, but because the painkiller dulled her consciousness and deprived her of the only thing she still had to give.

"[Morphine] reduces my lucidity, and there is only one thing I can do now: offer my suffering to Jesus." — Chiara Luce Badano^[38][39]

There lies the heart of her holiness: not enduring pain, but transforming it into love. Chiara did not want to put her Passion to sleep; she wanted to live it, awake, as a conscious offering. Those who visited her — the sick, the young, priests — left shaken at having found, in that room, not a dying girl to console but a source of peace.

"I have nothing left, but I still have my heart"

Stripped little by little of everything — health, her legs, her future, the beauty of her sixteen years — Chiara formulated the saying that would become her motto, engraved today on the official site dedicated to her:

"I don't have anything anymore, but I do have a heart, and with that I can still love." — Chiara Luce Badano^[40][41]

She gave what she still had: her savings, handed to a friend leaving for the missions; her joy, which she refused to let die out; and soon her body itself. Far from despondency, she confided:

"I suffered a great deal, but my soul was singing." — Chiara Luce Badano^[42]

The white dress and the funeral feast

As the end approached, Chiara prepared not a burial but a wedding. She had always seen Jesus Forsaken as her "Spouse": her death would therefore be a nuptial encounter. She organised herself, in detail, the liturgy of her funeral — the hymns, the readings, the flowers — and asked to be buried in a white bridal gown, with a simple pink sash.^[43][44]

She forbade weeping:

"At my funeral, I don't want people crying, but singing with all their hearts." — Chiara Luce Badano^[45][46]

And she entrusted to her mother the instruction that says everything about her faith in eternal life:

"When you prepare me, Mum, you must keep repeating to yourself: 'Chiara Luce is now seeing Jesus.'" — Chiara Luce Badano to her mother^[47][48]

The gift of her corneas

Faithful to the end to her logic of gift, Chiara offered what she could still give of her body: she asked for her corneas to be removed after her death.^[49] The gesture, discreet, sums up her life: keeping nothing for herself, making her very flesh a gift.

She went still further in abandonment, renouncing even hastening her deliverance:

"I no longer ask Jesus to come and fetch me to take me to Paradise, because I still want to offer him my pain by sharing a little more in his cross." — Chiara Luce Badano^[50]

"Mum, be happy, for I am" (7 October 1990)

After a last night of great suffering, Chiara Luce Badano died at dawn on 7 October 1990 — the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary — at eighteen, three weeks before her nineteenth birthday.^[51][52] Her last words, addressed to her mother, seal a life of joy:

"Mum, goodbye. Be happy, for I am." — last words of Chiara Luce Badano, 7 October 1990^[53][54]

Her funeral, celebrated at Sassello, gathered an immense crowd: the whole village came to a standstill, and some two thousand people accompanied the one many already considered a saint.^[55][56] She was buried in the family chapel of the Sassello cemetery.

The cause and the title of Venerable (2008)

Carried by the reputation of holiness that grew after her death, the cause for the beatification of Chiara Luce Badano was promoted by Bishop Livio Maritano, Bishop of Acqui.^[57] The diocesan inquiry opened at the end of the 1990s and gathered testimonies, writings and letters — including her rich correspondence with Chiara Lubich, who declared that in her she saw a model in whom "we can be renewed".^[58]

On 3 July 2008, Pope Benedict XVI recognised the heroicity of her virtues and declared her Venerable.^[59][60]

The miracle of Andrea (Trieste)

For beatification, a miracle is required. It was identified in the healing of a young boy from Trieste, Andrea, struck in 2001 by a most serious meningitis (meningococcal septicaemia) with a hopeless prognosis. His parents implored Chiara's intercession; the child recovered suddenly, completely and lastingly.^[61] The medical board concluded on 15 January 2009 that the healing was "rapid, complete and lasting", humanly inexplicable, and the decree recognising the miracle was approved on 19 December 2009.^[62][63]

Beatification (25 September 2010)

On 25 September 2010, Chiara Luce Badano was proclaimed Blessed at the Shrine of Our Lady of Divine Love, in Rome, at the end of a celebration presided over by Cardinal Angelo Amato, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and legate of Pope Benedict XVI.^[64][65] Some twenty-five thousand people, mostly young people from dozens of countries, surrounded the ceremony.^[66] In his homily, Cardinal Amato described Chiara as "a girl with a crystal-clear heart", modern, sporty and positive, bearing a message of hope.^[67]

Her feast day is fixed on 29 October, the day of her birth.^[68]

The figure of Chiara Luce Badano is shattering because she abolishes the distance between holiness and the ordinary life of a teenager. She loved tennis, songs, the mountains, her friends; she repeated a class; she left neither theological writing, nor foundation, nor spectacular prodigy in her lifetime. Her holiness lies entirely in the quality of her love^[69] in the midst of an atrocious trial. Three lessons remain:

• Holiness is played out in the present moment. "I shall be holy if I am holy straight away": Chiara did not wait for heroic circumstances; she sanctified tennis, school, friendship, then illness, one moment after another.
• Suffering can become a conscious gift. By refusing morphine in order to "offer" her pain in full lucidity, Chiara shows that the Cross, united to Christ's, is not an endured fatality but a chosen love.
• Christian joy is stronger than death. "Be happy, for I am": these last words are not a denial of pain, but the affirmation that beyond all stripping away, "the heart remains, and with it we can always love".

"Come, Holy Spirit, send us from Heaven a ray of your light." — prayer repeated by Chiara Luce Badano as her death approached^[70]

• Blessed Alexandrina of Balazar (1904-1955) — Portuguese mystic, a victim soul offering her sufferings, close to Chiara's spirituality of oblation.
• Venerable Antonietta Meo (1930-1937) — "Nennolina", a little Roman girl who died of osteosarcoma like Chiara and likewise offered her pain to Christ.
• Blessed Solanus Casey (1870-1957) — a figure of twentieth-century holiness in whom humility and confident abandonment to God take the place of greatness.
• Servant of God Chiara Lubich (1920-2008) — foundress of the Focolare Movement, Chiara's spiritual guide and source of the spirituality of "Jesus Forsaken".