Recognizing beauty: Giulio Ciarrocchi and his legacy

Jul 13, 2025 | Famiglie, Testimonianze di Vita

A man, a husband, a father; a tireless professional, a Christian: these are just some of the qualities that describe Giulio Ciarrocchi, a married focolarino who, after years of illness, recently passed away. He was a shining example of great trust in that plan that God had in mind for him and his family.

Giulio was born in Brooklyn (USA) to father Andrea and mother Romilda. His sister Maria Teresa was already part of the family. A year later, the family returned to Petritoli, a picturesque town in the Marche region of central Italy. Giulio later studied in Fermo, a nearby city. His father, passed on his love for singing, to Giulio, which led him to compose songs as a young man. He was involved in both the choir and other activities in the village, and had many friends. This was in 1968.69, the height of the student protests. Giulio recounted: “Inside me, everything was questioned. I openly contested everything and everyone, nothing satisfied me”. At the age of 22, he met Chiara Lubich’s spirituality of unity: “It was a very strong light that opened my eyes to evangelical love,” he said. I started with the seemingly simple things, like greeting people: the other was no longer a stranger: Jesus lived in them. Previously I only related to people who had the same interests as me. Now I realized that there were also the poor and the marginalized. For example, I remember a very poor elderly woman, avoided by everyone because she always said the same things and never washed herself. Now when I’d meet her, I’d give her a lift in the car and take her where she needed to go. When she became sick I went to see her in the hospital every day until she died. Then there was a boy with a disability, rejected by his family, who had been recently hospitalized after attempting suicide. I approached him in friendship. Little by little, I helped him to have confidence in life, to reconnect with family members and to find a job. I felt such a great joy and freedom that everything else seemed to fade away”.

In the years that followed, Giulio became deeply involved in the Gen Movement, the youth reality of the Focolare Movement, which led him to make the Gospel his way of life. He was drawn to the values in which he believed and to which he dedicated himself with other young people: justice, equality and friendship.

He graduated in Economics and worked in a Bank. At the age of 26 he met Pina. They married in 1976 and set up home in Ancona (Marche). After three years, they were invited to move to Grottaferrata (Rome) to help out in the International Secretariat of New Families. Giulio applied for a job in a bank in Rome and, as soon as he was successful, Pina and he and the little Francesca and Chiara (Sara was born later) moved to Grottaferrata. It was September 1979.

While Pina, also a married focolarina, worked full-time at the Secretariat of New Families, Giulio, depending on his work, made himself available for various activities: offering assistance at international meetings; sharing, together with Pina, their life experiences and God’s work in them, not only with engaged couples and young couples, but also during Focolare Movement formation meetings for children and young people and conferences with representatives of various Churches. They often opened the doors of their home to welcome families from around the world who were visiting the Focolare’s international centre, an experience that was enriching for the whole family.

In 1993, the FN Secretariat unanimously asked Giulio, with his warm empathy and charming presence, to host Familyfest, the global event held at the Palaeur in Rome.

Pina and he were among the founding members of AMU (Action for a United World) and AFN (Action for New Families). They served on the National Office for Family Pastoral Care of the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI) for two years.

Suddenly, in May 1995, everything changed. Giulio suffered a stroke. He survived thanks to the timely care he received and his extraordinary determination, facing long hospital stays and exhausting physiotherapy. A few months later, he sent this message to friends:

“The day I entered this clinic, the Mass reading spoke of Abraham being invited by God to leave his land to go where He would lead him. I felt that call was for me. In all these years I had worked hard to find a sense of balance. This illness shattered that balance. I had to find a new one and I asked God where he wanted to lead me. Having to start all over again scared me. But Jesus gave me the answer and the strength to go on.”

His illness became a journey of rediscovering a relationship with the Father: “I am living a beautiful experience of relationship with God and with the community even if amid physical pain, which, however, I assure you, is truly secondary to the great gifts I have received”.

Giulio never recovered, indeed his condition gradually worsened. His life and that of his family was put to the test, but their unity, especially that as a couple, was so real and inscrutable, so joyful and fruitful that Chiara Lubich herself wanted to affirm it with the words of the Psalm: “In him our hearts rejoice” (33:21).

For seven years, Giulio struggled to continue working at the bank to reach the minimum retirement requirement, deeply grateful to his colleagues for their help and support. Then, finally, a break from work, but not from his commitment, together with Pina, to families around the world, working as long as he was able and then offering and praying until the end, certain that Pina was an expression of the unity between them.

In 2007 another challenge came. Giulio wrote: “I have received the biopsy result: it’s a carcinoma, and I’ll need radiotherapy. I repeat my ‘yes’ to Jesus. Some might say that God has targeted me, since I’ve already lived through 12 difficult post-stroke years. I, on the other hand, believe I am very much loved and I thank him for the privilege of participating in his mystery of love for the good of humanity.”

In May 2025, Giulio and Pina celebrated 30 years of illness. That’s right, celebrated. And not because everything was over now, but because as Giulio commented, “They have been years of grace”. Though his memory had begun to fade, his spiritual dimension remained vibrant. “I live in the present”, he said on 2nd February, 2025, “and I look upward. Jesus tells me, don’t worry, I’m here, right behind you”. And on 25th June, Pina’s birthday, in a moment of clarity, he said to her: “You’ve always managed so well, I hope you will continue to do so even more!” On Giulio’s final day, while waiting for the ambulance after praying three Hail Marys together, he said: “Mary most pure, help us.”

Giulio was a gift for all those who met him. Many messages of gratitude have been received from relatives, colleagues and friends from all over the world.

Giulio had many gifts and many people were enriched by his life, as his daughters shared after the funeral:

“What we would like to share is his ability to recognize beauty. Not surface-level or aesthetic beauty, but the kind you discover by going deeper, when you overcome fear and embrace life with your heart. That invisible, but powerful beauty, which runs through life’s fabric, which is light in pain and joy in illness. This is the beauty to which our Dad introduced us, by involving us in his many passions such as art, photography, music, theatre, travel and the sea… passions that today are also ours and that allow us to have an open and confident approach to the world just like he did until the end. Dear Dad, we’ve often thought that life wasn’t kind to you, but the kindness you didn’t receive, you gave to your life and to ours.

In these last few years, your physical world has shrunk, yet your inner world has expanded, teaching us gratitude for every single day of life”.

La redazione con la collaborazione di Anna e Alberto Friso

This link is to a video-interview produced by the Santa Chiara Audiovisual Centre featuring Giulio and his wife Pina: Falling in love again, day by day.