Bl. Chiara Badano

Chiara Badano was born in 1971 in Sassello, near Savona in Italy. Her father was a truck driver and her mother a homemaker. She loved snow, the sea and sport. At nine she met the Focolare Movement, a Catholic lay movement founded by Chiara Lubich, and joined its youth branch.

At sixteen, during a tennis game, she felt a sharp pain in her shoulder. It turned out to be osteosarcoma, a bone cancer. Operations and chemotherapy did not stop it, and her legs became paralysed. She refused morphine so that she could stay clear-headed. Her hospital room and then her bedroom at home became a place where people came to pray and talk. Chiara Lubich gave her the nickname "Luce", meaning light.

She planned her own funeral as a celebration, down to her white dress. Her last words to her mother were: "Be happy, because I am." She died on October 7, 1990, aged eighteen, and was beatified in 2010.

She once said: "I loved riding my bike, and God took away my legs, but he gave me wings."

Chiara Badano was beatified in 2010 by Benedict XVI.

Beatification allows public veneration, usually in a particular region or religious family. Canonization extends it to the whole Church.