As we come closer to the September 25 celebration in Rome, when 18-year-old Chiara Luce Badano will be declared Blessed, we continue to publish the profiles of others among the seventeen Focolare members who are on the way to being recognized 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 of them were explicitly happy. What sets these people apart, in fact, was their tremendous joy.

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 he was 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)

Jerzy Ciesielski

Jerzy Ciesielski (1929-1970), born in Krakow, Poland, was married with three children. A university professor with a Ph.D. in engineering, he built the foundations for a large sports complex in Katowice and invented a way of binding structural cracks in cement.

Pope John Paul II, with whom he had a close friendship, said that Jerzy “used his service as a scientist, his understanding of reason as a mode of service, as a path to holiness.”

Ciesielski saw his family life in the same way he considered his life as a scientist: a response to a call from God. Then Cardinal Karol Wojtyla gave him credit for being a source of inspiration for the former’s book Love and Responsibility, which deals with sexuality, love and marriage.

In 1968 Ciesielski met the Focolare in Krakow and immediately embraced its spirituality. Struck by the love he saw among its members, he joined them as a married focolarino.

The following year, upon learning that Sudan was in dire need of engineers, he left Poland for Khartoum, where he took up a position as university lecturer. There he earned the love and respect of his students, Christians and Muslims alike. Some of his Muslim students called him a “man of God.”

On October 9, 1970, he and two of his children drowned in a boating accident on the Nile River. He was 41.

Ginetta Calliari

“Unity is the gift which characterized Luigia “Ginetta” Calliari (1918-2001), the most genuine, authentic, perfect, strong unity lived out and accomplished with an exclusive and persevering love for Jesus crucified and forsaken,” wrote Chiara Lubich. Ginetta was one of her first companions, having met her in 1944 in Trent, Italy.

In 1959, Calliari went to Brazil to give her contribution to what had become the Magna Carta of their life: the fulfillment of Jesus’ prayer, “May all be one” (Jn 17:21). More than 280,000 people met the Focolare spirituality of unity through her; among them government officials and religious leaders.

Calliari was astonished by the enormous gap between the rich and the poor in Brazil, but she was convinced that the presence of Jesus among those united in his name would convince the rich and the poor to share what they have. When Chiara visited the country in 1991 and launched the Economy of Communion, 82 of the 700 businesses that adhered to it were based in Brazil. She was a true evangelizer through her witness and concrete works. (ginettacalliari.blogspot.com)