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“We can’t do without you”

Nov 1, 2012

Chiara Lubich’s vision of non-believers

In an uninterrupted dialogue with people without any religious affiliation, Chiara Lubich, in 1995, finds herself explaining why the Focolare Movement would lose its identity without the non-believers.

«This is absolutely true! As a Movement, as a new community that has come to life in the Church, we have a universal vocation.

Therefore, our motto is: “That all may be one.” Now, this “all” includes you too. We can’t do without you because you are included in that “all,” otherwise we would be cutting away or excluding half the world, or at least a third of the world. Instead, we say: “That all may be one.”

Of course, we must “be one” in so far as it is possible. We will be one in values, we will be one in other ideas, we will be one in something actual».

Chiara Lubich to friends without any religious affiliation, Loppiano, May 7, 1995

Published in DiaLogos 02, CNx, September 2012

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A precious legacy: Chiara Lubich’s ‘Paradise ’49’

The first presentation of Chiara Lubich’s book ‘Paradise ’49’ took place on the 22nd of May 2026 in the Paul VI Hall at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome. The book is a collection of writings in which the Foundress of the Focolare Movement bears witness to and shares her mystical experience from the years 1949 to 1951.

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It is the 16th of July 1949. Chiara Lubich is in Tonadico, in the Dolomite Mountains in northern Italy, for a period of rest together with some of her first companions. They are joined there by the Honourable Igino Giordani, whom Chiara called Foco. On that day, Chiara and Foco sealed a Pact of unity, a prelude to the spiritual and mystical experience that Chiara would live between 1949 and 1951. This period is known as “Paradise ’49”, the writings from which have recently been published in a book (for now in Italian). In the introduction to the book, the theologian Piero Coda offers some insights “For a theological reading” of the text. Here is an extract, relating specifically to the Pact of the 16th of July, together with a short video of Chiara Lubich from 20 December 1999, in which she shares this experience of light with the Gen, the young people of the Focolare Movement.