It was July 1991. Chiara Lubich was travelling in Brazil. She was struck by the ‘crown of thorns’, the slums or the favelas, surrounding the huge cities she visited. In response to the people’s conditions of poverty, she launched a project: the Economy of Communion. When she returned to Italy she spoke of this inspiration to several business people. Her words, recalls Luigi Delfi who was present, ‘challenged entrepreneurs to embrace the philosophy of sharing a third of their profits with those who are most poor. This intuition of hers was, for me, overwhelming.’

Luigi had had a thirty-year experience as a designer in a firm making lighting equipment. He saw a secret harmony in it because ‘to have a good light you need prisms that are distinct from one another but at the same time solidly united.’

Chiara’s proposal seemed to Luigi like a personal call. ‘It immediately grabbed me,’ he said, ‘because I come from a family that knows the value of sacrifice.’ Luigi became one of the founder members of ECIE, the first Italian business to follow the principles of the Economy of Communion.

An association at a distance grew up with Chiara, consisting in letters asking advice and swift replies on how to proceed. ‘Every step I took with the new business was considered with her,’ he affirmed. Chiara taught him how not let his characteristic of being like a small volcano of light be suffocated by egoism and how to give himself to others as he continued to be creative and effective.

Over time his firm became the most important international supplier for the motorcycle industry of lighting equipment, with contacts from Japan to the United States. Luigi’s wife and his daughter, Erika, joined his team.

The challenge is still there, especially in the current economic crisis. ‘This is the reason why today the Economy of Communion as proposed by Chiara,’ Luigi said in conclusion, ‘is increasingly necessary and is a call to each of us in the first place as persons, because it makes us able to offer our own contribution within the economic sphere.’

Source: ‘Da una scintilla un vulcano di luce’ (‘From a Spark a Volcano of Light’), by Mariagrazia Baroni, Città Nuova, 25 May 2013, pp. 38-39.