Chiara Luce Badano

Blessed Chiara Badano was a young Italian teenager who is currently in the process of being pronounced a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. When she was 16 she was diagnosed with osteogenic sarcoma, a painful bone cancer. Chiara succumbed to the cancer on October 7, 1990 after a two-year battle with the disease. Her feast day is celebrated on October 29.

Chiara Luce Badano was born on October 29, 1971 to Ruggero and Maria Teresa Badano in the small village of Sassello, Italy. The couple waited and prayed eleven years to have Chiara. They considered her to be their greatest blessing. While Ruggero worked as a truck driver, Maria Theresa stayed at home to raise Chiara. Chiara grew up with a strong and healthy relationship with her parents, but she did not always obey them and would occasionally have fights with them.

Maria Teresa Badano (Chiara’s mother): “Chiara had many toys and like all children she liked to play. One day, while she was playing in her room and I was working in the kitchen, I told Chiara: “Surely, you have many toys, lots of them!” She replied: “Yes, why?” I said: “Couldn’t you give some to the poor?” She answered: “They are mine!” And she grabs her toys out of fear. After some time, while I am in the kitchen, I hear her say: “This one yes, this one no…!” I was curious, I looked from her door and saw that she had divided all her toys and then she told me: “Bring me a bag mum,” I brought her the bag and she put some of her toys into it. I asked her: “But Chiara, these are the new ones!” And she said: “Mum, I cannot give old and broken toys to poor chidren.”

In first grade, she was attentive in all sorts of little ways toward her classmate, a girl who had lost her mum. At Christmas, Chiara Luce enthusiastically agreed with her mother’s proposal that they invite her to celebrate with them, and she asked that they use the most beautiful table cloth, “because today Jesus will be with us!”

Her life was full of little acts of love. One evening she wrote: “One of my classmates has chicken pox and everyone is afraid to go visit her. With my parents’ permission, I decided to do my homework over at her place so she wouldn’t feel lonely. I think that love is more important than fear.”

Focolare Movement

Chiara attended her first meeting of the Focolare Movement in September of 1980. She was only 9 years old. This group, especially its founder’s Chiara Lubich, had a profound impact on Chiara’s life. The group focused on the image of the forsaken Christ as a way to make it through difficult times. Chiara later wrote that, “I discovered that Jesus Foresaken is the key to unity with God, and I want to choose him as my only spouse. I want to be ready to welcome him when he comes. To prefer him above all else.”

Her life is made up of successes and failures: lack of understanding and appreciation by some of her teachers (she fails an exam during her higher secondary school which she considers an injustice), friendships and marginalization (due to her Christian commitment, she is branded as “nun”). Her first falling in love soon turned out to be a disappointment. It was very difficult for Chiara Luce to transfer from Sassello to Savona with her family. She was obliged to do so for the sake of her studies, to which she committed herself during her illness, up till a few days before her death. Chiara Luce tries to turn small and great difficulties into love, always dedicated to the persons close to her. Though she was not always successful, “however – mum says – she gave Jesus her desire to make it.”

During the summer of 1988, when she was 16 years old, Chiara had a life-changing experience in Rome with the Focolare Movement. She wrote back to her parents, “This is a very important moment for me: it is an encounter with Jesus Forsaken. It hasn’t been easy to embrace this suffering, but this morning Chiara Lubich explained to the children that they have to be the spouse of Jesus Forsaken.”[1] After this trip she started to correspond regularly with Chiara Lubich. She then asked for her new name as this was going to be the start of a new life for her. Chiara Lubich gave her the name Chiara Luce. This was a kind of play on words since in Italian “Chiara” is a common girl’s name, taken for example from the name of St Clare of Assisi, but it is also an everyday word meaning “clear”. “Luce”, is occasionally found as a girl’s name in Italy, though it is mostly secular rather than religious and it, too, is also an everyday word meaning “light”. So “Chiara Luce” means “Clare/Clear Light”. Lubich wrote to Chiara that “your luminous face shows your love for Jesus” which is why she gave her the name Luce.

Sickness

Summer 1988. Then something totally unforeseen happened. While playing tennis one day, Chiara Luce experiences a very sharp pain in her shoulder. At first she does not take much notice and neither does her doctor. However, since the pain persists, the doctor carries out further tests. The verdict: osteogenic sarcoma, one of the most serious and painful forms of cancer and it has already started spreading.

In February 1989, Chiara Luce undergoes her first surgery. On hearing this news, Chiara Luce, after a moment’s silence, accepts the outcome courageously, without tears or rebellion. “I’m young. I’m sure I’ll make it,” she says.

Maria Teresa (Chiara Luce’s mother): “I said to myself, now Chiara has said her ‘yes’ to Jesus, buthow many times but how many times would she have to say this ‘yes’; how many times will she fall; how many times would she have to repeat it during surgical operations and in moments of pain. However, Chiara Luce takes twenty five minutes to say her ‘yes’ to God and from that moment on, she never looks back.” Her father, Ruggero narrates: “We were sure that Jesus was in our midst in that moment as he gave us the strength to accept it.” This was when a dramatic change took place in Chiara Luce’s life and her rapid ascent towards holiness began.

Throughout the treatment process, Chiara refused to take any morphine so she could stay aware. She felt it was important to know her illness and pain so she could offer up her sufferings. She said, “It reduces my lucidity and there’s only one thing I can do now: to offer my suffering to Jesus because I want to share as much as possible in his sufferings on the cross.”

In June 1989, Chiara Luce undergoes a second surgery. This time, hopes are slim. She is admitted to hospital many times and her kindness and unselfishness really stand out. Setting aside her own need to rest, she spends time walking around the wards with a drug-dependent girl suffering from serious depression. This meant getting out of bed despite the pain caused by the huge growth on her spine. “I’ll have time to rest later,” she says.

While Chiara Luce Badano was in hospital, youth and adult friends of the Focolare Movement take turns in the hospital in order to support her and her family. The treatment is painful and she wants to be informed of every detail of her illness. For each new, painful surprise, her offering is firm: “For you, Jesus, if you want it, I want it too!”

One day Chiara Luce writes: “Jesus sent me this illness at the right moment.” Ferdinando Garetto, then one of the youth who shares the same choice of life as Chiara Luce, narrates: “At first we thought we would visit Chiara Luce to keep her spirits up, however, we soon realized that in fact, we were the ones who needed her. Her life was like a magnet drawing us towards her.” The cancer was spreading mercilessly, but Chiara Luce tried her best to live a normal and happy life.

One of the medical staff, Dr. Antonio Delogu, said, “Through her smile, and through her eyes full of light, she showed us that death doesn’t exist; only life exists.” She had to undergo surgery twice. The subsequent chemotherapy treatment caused her to lose her hair, which she was very proud of. As each lock of hair fell, she would say simply, but sincerely, “For you, Jesus”.

In July 1989: the tumour spreads quickly. Chiara Luce is not yet 18 years of age and she loses the use of her legs. She tells her mother: “I really used to enjoy cycling around.” And her mother replies, “If Jesus has taken away the use of your legs, he will give you wings.”

When she lost the use of her legs, Chiara Luce said, “If I had to choose between walking or going to heaven, I would choose going to heaven.” With the last CAT scan, all hopes of remission disappeared.

Slowly, slowly, Chiara Luce starts having the foreboding of death: “Mum, is it fair to die at 17 years of age?” and her mother replies, “I don’t know. I only know that it is important to do God’s will, if this is his plan for you.” Whenever she heard this, Chiara Luce would redouble her efforts to love. So, for example, she gave all her savings to a friend leaving on a humanitarian mission to Africa, saying, “I have everything. I don’t need this anymore.”

At one point, Chiara Luce suffers a severe bleeding and she is in danger of dying. Her young friends take turns in praying all night. The doctors are in doubt whether to carry out a blood transfusion and prolong her suffering or just let her pass away…They decide to carry out the transfusion. From that moment, Chiara Luce lives another year, a year which is very decisive for her.

For this last year, Chiara Luce is completely immobile in bed: through telephone calls she follows an emerging group of Youth for a United World (Y4UW) of Savona. She also participates in their congresses and activities through messages, postcards and posters, and she tries to spread the spirituality of unity among her friends and school companions. She actually invites many of them for Genfest ’90 (an international Youth for a United World gathering, held in Rome in May of 1990). She has the joy of watching the Genfest ’90 through a satellite dish antenna mounted for this purpose on the roof of her home.

She has always Chiara Lubich’s support and the latter writes her the following, “God loves you immensely and wants to penetrate the depths of your soul in order to allow you experience heaven on earth.”

Departure

19 July 1989: Chiara Luce nearly died because of a hemorrhage. She says to her mother Teresa: “Don’t shed any tears for me. I’m going to Jesus. At my funeral, I don’t want people crying, but singing with all their hearts.” She writes to her friends, “Previously I felt another world was awaiting me and the most I could do was to let go. Instead now I feel enfolded in a marvelous plan of God which is slowly being unveiled to me.” She confides: “I no longer ask Jesus to come and take me away to heaven. I don’t want to give him the impression that I don’t want to suffer any longer”. She knows what lay before her and she does not want to change anything (she does not pray for a cure but to be able to do God’s will).

During one of those moments of great pain, she confides to her mother Teresa that she is singing in her heart a familiar song: “Eccomi Gesù anche oggi davanti a Te… – Here I am oh Jesus, today as well, I’m here before You…” Chiara Luce is aware that her meeting with Him is approaching and she starts preparing herself. On one of those mornings following a night of severe pain, Chiara Luce spontaneously repeats at short intervals: “Come Lord Jesus.” At 11:00 am, a priest from the Focolare Movement pays her a surprise visit. Chiara Luce is very happy! In fact, from the very moment she woke up, she desired receiving Jesus in the Eucharist. This eventually becomes the food for her departing journey.

Chiara Luce Badano passes away to Heaven on the 7th of October 1990.

Together with her mother, Chiara Luce prepares for her “wedding celebration”, her funeral. She herself gives instructions on how she wanted to be dressed; she chooses the music, the songs, the flowers and the Mass readings. She tells her mother, “When you’re getting me ready, Mum, you have to keep saying to yourself, ‘Chiara Luce is now seeing Jesus.” At the moment of her departure her parents are at her bedside, and all her friends were in the adjoining room. There is a great sense of peace. To her father Ruggero, who had asked her if she is always willing to donate her corneas, Chiara Luce answers with a bright smile. Her last words to her mother Teresa are: “Goodbye. Be happy because I’m happy.”

Two thousand people attended her funeral. The mayor of Sassello shut down the town so people would be able to attend.

Beatification

Chiara’s cause for sainthood was promoted by the former Bishop of Acqui, Most Rev. Livio Maritano, beginning in 1999. It was through this process that she was declared a “Venerable” on July 3, 2008.

In December 2009, Pope Benedict XVI acknowledged the miracle of a young Italian boy whose parents interceded to Chiara to heal him from meningitis that was destroying his organs. His doctors could not medically explain his sudden healing.

Chiara Badano was declared a “Blessed” in the Catholic Church on September 25, 2010 at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Divine Love in Rome. Thousands of people came for the event.

Archbishop Angelo Amato, the head of the Vatican Congregation of the Causes of Saints, said that Chiara was a great example of how the short life of the young could be lived out in great holiness and “today there are virtuous people, who in family, at school, in society do not fritter away their lives.” Chiara Badano’s feast day is celebrated on October 29.