Vatican City, Sep 26, 2010 / 19:14 pm
Chiara “Luce” Badano, a teenage Italian member of the Focolare Movement, was beatified on Saturday. Church leaders and others remembered her in celebrations throughout the weekend for her example of love, Christian coherence and charity. They called her a reminder that “everyone has sufficient grace to become saints.”
Born in 1971, Chiara died in 1990 at nearly 19 years of age. Her biography describes a life lived in total devotion to God and abandonment to His will. Many witnesses have testified to the happiness she transmitted in spite of the pain of the bone cancer which eventually took her life.
Thousands of people gathered at the Marian Sanctuary of Divine Love just outside of Rome for the Mass and Rite of Beatification on Saturday afternoon. The young blessed was remembered by Archbishop Angelo Amato during the celebration as a girl with “a heart crystalline like water from the source.”
Noting specific acts of charity throughout her short life, Archbishop Angelo Amato, head of the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints, cited one witness' testimony that being with her gave a person the "feeling of finding God."