Padua: Childcare Centre dedicated to Chiara Lubich

Saturday, October 12, the “Chiara Lubich” childcare centre was inaugurated in Padua (Italy). It was a big celebration that involved the whole community of the district of Altichiero a few minutes away from the historic centre of Padua. More than three hundred people were present at the ribbon-cutting ceremony to get to know this new educative reality.

“We would like to continue to form and to raise the younger generations,” Ivo Rossi, vice-mayor of Padua underlined, “Today there is a strong need to be present in every district of the city with the principals of communication and relations. We live in a moment of economic difficulty which we as administrators feel first hand, but in these difficulties lie our duty to continue to create the conditions that will make our children free.”

A city that is united in remembering Chiara Lubich, founder of the Focolare Movement and recipient of the UNESCO Prize for Education to Peace and Human Rights. “Honest, credible and authentic  young people will be able to change the world,” explained Claudio Piron, councillor in charge of scholastic and youth policies at Padua’s local council, and supporter of the initiative.

Among the guests there was also Omar Ettahiri, secretary of the Moroccan association of the city of Padua who placed at the centre of his speech the charism of Chiara Lubich as a teacher of interreligious dialogue and a woman of peace who “is surely smiling in heaven”, he affirmed.

It was an occasion also to remember the educative and scholastic background of the founder of the Focolare who in the beginning of the forties, just as she turned twenty, taught in the elementary schools of the province of Trent with a teaching method that was “capable of understanding, embracing and motivating her students”. “Chiara’s life,” underlined Professor Milan, professor of pedagogy at the University of Padua,” (…) has truly set the example”.

At the conclusion of the ceremony the same Councillor Piron, quoting the words of the French writer Marguerite Yourcenar, reaffirmed the importance and the value of the project for the whole community because “to found libraries and nurseries is like building once again public granaries in order to accumulate reserves against the winter of the spirit”.