She was beautiful, enterprising, sports-loving, an ordinary young person. Then the unexpected illness: anguish and pain, followed by death. A rapid ascent to heaven. Her cause for beatification is underway    “I rediscovered the Gospel in a totally new light. I realised that I wasn’t an authentic Christian because it had never occurred to me before to actually live the Gospel. Now I want to make the living of this beautiful book my only goal. I cannot, nor do I want to, remain ‘illiterate’ in the face of such an extraordinary message. Just as there was no question of me not learning the alphabet, so it must be when it comes to living the Gospel.” Chiara Luce Badano       “Chiara Luce! How much light in her expression! How much light in her words, in her letters, in her life so focused on loving others in a concrete way! Hers was a radical choice of Jesus crucified and forsaken. It was a choice for “everything that hurts” – all those things which, if not embraced, drag us down into a dark tunnel. She lived with Him; with Him she transformed her passion and death into a nuptial song.” Chiara Lubich        “Her witness is of particular significance to young people. It’s enough to see how she lived her illness and how the experience of her death resonated with the youth. Such a shining example could not be neglected. There is a need for sanctity today. Young people yearn for direction, for a goal worth living for. They need a means of addressing  their sense of insecurity, their solitude; they need an answer to the failures they experience, to suffering and death. But theory will never convince them; they need the witness of others.”  “In talking to her I saw she was far more mature than other young people of her age. She had grasped the fundamentals of the Gospel: God, to whom she gave first place in her life; Jesus, with whom she had a close relationship, as a brother; Mary, who was her model; love as the focus of her life; steadfastness in proclaiming the Gospel. All those attributes, together with her experience of living suffering and death as something not to be feared, but rather welcomed, made her life truly singular.” (The Most Rev. Livio Maritano, Bishop of Acqui Terme, in an interview by Aurora Nicosia for Citta’ Nuova magazine, Rome)