Posted on 01/29/2015 7:59:48 PM PST by marshmallow
ROME — Arguably the most powerful laywoman in the Catholic Church in the late 20th century is now a candidate for sainthood, after the launch of a beatification process on Tuesday in Italy followed by 18,000 people around the world via live streaming.
Chiara Lubich, founder of the Focolare movement, died in 2008 at the age of 88. The bid to declare her a saint comes shortly after a mandatory five-year waiting period in Church law to open a beatification process expired.
Bishop Raffaello Martinelli of Frascati, Italy, officiated at Tuesday’s launch of the process. Frascati is the diocese where the international headquarters of the Focolare is located and where Lubich was buried after her funeral in Rome, which was attended by an estimated 40,000 people.
The Focolare, which in Italian means “hearth,” is a Catholic movement founded by Lubich in Trent during the Second World War with the aim of promoting unity. Over the years, it’s been especially active in ecumenical and inter-faith dialogue, and currently claims 100,000 members in 182 countries.
The Focolare are also the only movement in the Catholic Church whose statutes require the group’s president to be a woman.
(Excerpt) Read more at cruxnow.com ...
But women must have more power in the Church!
No “sainthood candidates” exist in Scripture. Just saints (all who entrust themselves to Christ alone and His sacrifice for their sins) and those who have never done so.
If she wasn’t a saint before she died, she ain’t going to become one now by vote.
She was something like Pericles’ Aspasia?
Lubich: “For some time now in our Movement – but not only in our Movement – we have established a profound unity in God with Muslims, and precisely in the United States with a vast African American Muslim Movement. I learned that in this moment they feel greatly helped by the fact that they are united with us Christians in the commitment to bring universal brotherhood in the world.”
http://www.focolare.org/en/news/2015/01/18/la-fraternita-come-antidoto-al-male/
Oops, the Vatican sycophant caucus will be inbound.
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