Instrumental friar

Me, Chiara Lubich, and that calling. An interview with Father Casimiro Bonetti

By Lucia Bellaspiga

Ninety years ago the founder of the Focolare Movement was born — January 22, 1920. Here in the words of the friar who inspired her vocation is the story of the beginnings of her revolutionary charism. “We were alone in the church of the Capuchin convent when she pronounced her ‘yes’ to God.” The Movement was born in that moment, and immediately crowds began to follow her.

“Unknowingly, I was the spark that lit the fire in the soul of Chiara Lubich,” says Father Casimiro Bonetti, 95. “It all began in Trent, Italy, under falling bombs. It was 1942 when I told her about Saint Francis and saw her inflamed with love. I was just a young friar, Father Casimiro from Perarolo [a town near Trent], when I was asked by Father Bruno of Verla, ‘Why not come up and preach for us? There are three young teachers here. Teach them something about St. Francis.’ While the war was furiously raging down in the valley, Fr. Bruno was giving shelter to dozens of orphans in the mountains of Trent that was being gutted by bombs.

“I had just finished my studies,” continues Fr. Casimiro, who is still very lucid and strong despite his age. “The Provincial Superior had entrusted the Franciscan Third Order to me, so I went around preaching. That day, too, in the orphanage at Cognola I spoke to three very young teachers about the ideal of St. Francis, his ‘fire of love.’ Then, one by one I asked them what they thought. Silvia Lubich [at the time a member of the Catholic Action] answered with words that I have never forgotten: ‘Father I have never heard anything like this. I want this fire of love; I want to bring it into the world.’ I saw her burning with that same fire.”

Soon the young teacher, 22-year-old Silvia from Trent, would become Focolare founder Chiara Lubich, the woman who would bring her powerful Gospel revolution and a new current of spirituality into the Church. She would gather men, women and children from all over the world and of every social class, age, race and culture. Years later Christians of other churches, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and nonbelievers would join together, all mysteriously attracted by Chiara’s universal language.

Chiara Lubich would be the first Christian woman invited to speak in front of 10,000 Buddhists in Tokyo, thousands of African-American Muslims at a mosque in Harlem, New York, and a Jewish community in Buenos Aires. In 1997 she would explain the unity of peoples to world leaders at the United Nations. For decades, until her death on March 14, 2008, the power of her actions would hold the interest of popes such as: Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

Trent, Chiara’s birthplace, in Northern Italy

“It was 1942,” Fr. Casimiro continues. “I returned several times to preach at the orphanage and seeing Silvia’s enthusiasm, I entrusted other young people to her. The unthinkable happened. Captivated by the example of St. Francis, who left everything to follow Christ, Silvia wanted to offer herself to the Lord. She took the name of St. Clare of Assisi. She didn’t want to become a nun; she wished to offer herself to God while remaining secular. I asked her to think it over well ... she was beaming. She told me she now belonged to God. Like St. Francis, she wanted to love God through loving her neighbor.”

Once again Fr. Casimiro would be the one to secretly light the fuse. On December 7, 1943, in the Capuchin church in Trent, he had the privilege to witness the unqualified “yes” of 23-year-old Chiara Lubich. “We were alone. I said Mass, and Chiara offered herself to God. She promised chastity and set off on her great adventure. The Focolare Movement had been born.”

Larger and larger numbers of young women of Trent followed her, rescuing people who were suffering under the bombs. “Chiara inflamed anyone she met. ... A group of young women went to live with Chiara in the first house of the movement, just beneath our convent.”

It is here that for the third time the Capuchin was the unwitting instrument of God: “One of the girls, Doriana, was assisting homeless people and had fallen ill. Chiara asked me to bring the Eucharist to her home. It was 1944 and a scene never to be forgotten: Doriana was in bed and Chiara was seated next to her.” Suddenly a question rose in the mind of the young friar. He still doesn’t know where it came from: “Which was the moment when Jesus suffered most?”

“It still gives me goose bumps,” Fr. Casimiro says as he recalls the event. “I had no idea of what was happening. Recalling it makes me feel I should be kneeling down in adoration. Chiara tried to answer: ‘In the garden of Gethsemane?’”

The friar corrected her. “No, it was when He cried out to his Father: ‘Why have you forsaken me?’ (Mt 27:46). That was the most excruciating moment.”

It was like a bolt of lightning. Deeply struck by this intuition, Chiara established the ideal of her movement: “From that moment on Chiara took Jesus forsaken as her own and saw him in every brother and sister of the human family.” In this God/Man, Chiara had found the key for restoring unity with the Creator and among all people. That was the day that the “project of unity” was born, and it would remain the goal of her life, which was always oriented towards fulfilling the last will of Christ, “that all be one” (Jn 17:21).

Until the day of her death, Chiara’s passion never faltered. She wanted to return the world to the Father, healed of its divisions and living in universal fraternity. Chiara once wrote: “On a day of your choosing, my God, I will finally draw near to you with my crazy dream: to bring you the world in my arms.”

Her funeral in the Roman Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls two years ago bore witness to these words. Present were members from Eastern religions, Islam, Judaism, Christian churches and Catholic ecclesial movements, as well as politicians from every side of the political field, all wishing to honor the life and the charism of Chiara Lubich.

“She had an extraordinary intellect and had enrolled in philosophy,” continued the friar,” but I advised her to let those things go. Times were bad. I suggested she stay with the poor people, who had lost everything in the bombing. She spread the words of Christ,‘Where two or more are gathered together in my name, there am I in their midst,’ everywhere with new and revolutionary force.”

Last summer, fifty young students of theology from all over the world went to visit Fr. Casimiro. They were a representative group of Chiara’s people, who are now spread all over world. “They came the day I was celebrating the 70th anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood. They wanted to know about Chiara’s beginnings, to hear from my own voice what I had seen. They even wanted to thank me, but I was just the unwitting spark; nothing happened by chance, and the Lord used me three times to show her the way.”

Perhaps it was for this purpose that in May of 1915 Casimiro, the son of an Abruzzo railroad worker, was born in the shadows of the Gran Sasso Mountain in central Italy. “Every time Dad was transferred,” he recounts, “my mother immediately sought the church closer to home.” Arriving in Rovereto, near Trent, she turned her gaze to the chapel of the Capuchins, “and every morning she made me go to Mass there, where one day I found my vocation.”

Then he went to Trent and met Chiara. She was 22 years old and he was 27: two young lives met for a few months — just enough time to change the world.

Reprinted with permission from L’Avvenire, translated by Bill Hartnett.

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