Their tremendous joy - Part II

After the Second Vatican Council, the concept of holiness widened, and a large number of lay people were beatified or proclaimed saints. People could see in them examples of holiness in ordinary life.

As we come closer to the September 25 celebration in Rome, when 18-year-old Chiara Luce Badano (www.chiaralucebadano.it) will be declared Blessed, we continue to publish the profiles of others among the seventeen Focolare members who are on their way to be recognized as saints by the Church. Their lives are the fruit of Chiara Lubich’s spirituality of unity.

There are many young people on this list, as well as a cardinal and a bishop, men, women and married people. All were explicitly happy. What sets these people apart, in fact, was their tremendous joy.

By Emilie Christy and Giovanna Pompele

1-8. Part I - Read Living City, March 2010. Click here!

9. Cardinal Van Thuan

Cardinal Van Thuan

Cardinal Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan (1928–2002), born in Hue, Vietnam, was ordained a priest in 1953. He was appointed bishop of Nha Trang in 1967 and bishop of Saigon in 1975.

A month after being appointed bishop, Saigon was overtaken by the North Vietnamese Army. Van Thuan was imprisoned for 13 years, 9 of them in solitary confinement.

His remarkable faith sustained him during the grueling years of imprisonment. One of the most inspiring elements of his experience was his ability to love his prison guards despite being subjected to the worst treatment imaginable. Before his imprisonment, Van Thuan had encountered the Focolare spirituality and was drawn to its focus on unity and mutual love. Now, faced with the brutal conditions of prison life, he made the radical choice to be the first to love. He befriended his guards, recounting stories of his travels and teaching them foreign languages.

One day the guards asked him, “Do you truly love us?” to which he responded, “Yes, I love you, even if you want to kill me I love you. If I don’t, I am not worthy of being called a Christian.”

Released from prison, in 1991 he moved to Italy, where he held several posts at the Vatican. He became cardinal in 2001. (www.card-fxthuan.org)

10. Maria Cecilia

Maria Cecilia Perrin de Buide

Maria Cecilia Perrin de Buide (1957–1985) was born in Punta Alta, Argentina. Her family had profound Catholic roots and, upon meeting the Focolare, embraced its spirituality. She grew up with its ideal of unity and married in 1983.

The following year, while she was pregnant with her first child, she was diagnosed with cancer. Treating the cancer would have involved losing her child, and she refused treatment. Her daughter, Augustina, was born in July 1984, but by this time the cancer had already spread to an untreatable stage, and Maria Cecilia died eight months later at the age of 28.

She is buried at Mariapolis Lia, the Focolare little city in O’Higgins, Argentina.

11. Manolo

Manolo Perrin

Manolo Perrin’s cause for beatification started at the same time as his daughter Maria Cecilia’s (her story is at left). Manolo was born in 1925 in Bahía Blanca and had five children with his wife Angelita. He met the Focolare in 1967 and was struck deeply by the power of its spirituality: “There are no words, it needs to be lived!” He gave himself heart and soul to the movement, and worked tirelessly to spread its charism of unity in spite of a lifetime of weak health. His goal was to “help others fly.” His dedication to loving led him to decry “the impossibility of making what I feel and what I do match. Oh, the abyss between the two! It makes us see the emptiness of the human being who lives outside of Love, outside of the will of God.” In the last years of his life he devoted himself to dialogue with people of other religions and with non-believers. At the end he experienced a true night of the soul, feeling that God had given him the chance to relive all the negativity of his life so that he could give it all to Him.

12. Renata

Renata Borlone

Renata Borlone (1930–1990) was born in Civitavecchia, near Rome. In spite of the fact that her parents were not religious, she received her first communion and remembered that day as “the most beautiful day of my life, because I could talk with Jesus, ask him for many blessings.”

When Rome was bombed in 1943, she experienced a moment of grace: “I felt suddenly the vanity of plans, games, rivalries; from one moment to the next I decided to be a better person.” In 1949, she met the Focolare and, soon after, Chiara. Through this she understood that God is Love and that we are all his children. This experience transformed her.

For the next 18 years she held various positions of responsibility in the movement in Italy and France. From 1967 on she directed the school of formation for focolarine and the Focolare community of Loppiano for 23 years. At the end of 1989, she was diagnosed with cancer and died the following February.

She was joyous, heroic and attentive to others until the end. The day before she went to heaven, she heard Chiara’s voice on the phone and woke from a coma, telling Chiara: “I am happy.” Her last words were, “I want to bear witness to the fact that death is life.” (www.renataborlone.org)

Share on Facebook. Click here!