Thousands pack Rome basilica to pay last respects to Focolare founder

Published: 2008-03-18

ROME (CNS) -- Thousands of people from dozens of nations, a variety of Christian denominations and several other religious traditions packed into Rome's Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls to pay their final respects to Chiara Lubich, founder of the Focolare movement. In a message read at her March 18 funeral, Pope Benedict XVI told the mourners, "Many are the reasons for giving thanks to the Lord for the gift he gave the church in this woman of fearless faith." The congregation's thanks was expressed with loud, sustained applause that accompanied the measured pace of the six men carrying her coffin on their shoulders from the basilica's entrance to a carpet at the foot of the altar. Lubich, 88, died March 14; the Focolare movement, which she founded in the 1940s, now involves more than 2 million people in 182 countries.

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