Clearly 'the public', that is, those who are not 'internal members' of the Focolare movement - including the Vatican, the Catholic hierarchy and the movement's adherents - have no idea what level the personality cult around Chiara Lubich can reach. I suggest that everyone takes a look at this piece on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6NjyAOjDE8
Here, to marlk the 50th anniversary of the Focolare Movement a song is sung to Chiara Lubich in person ('Paradiso, Paradiso - dedicated to Chiara Lubich'), where it is said that it is not enough to thank Chiara Lubich merely in this life for her gifts (Jesus in the midst, love for pain, etc.) but we need all eternity to thank her. According to authentic Christian doctrine, heaven is based on the beatific vision - that is, seeing God 'face to face' in the words of St Paul. But if, for the focolarini, heaven consists of thanking Chiara for all eternity, this is perilously close to suggesting that Chiara is God. Something clearly does not add up. In this video, with these words, the singers seem almost in a trance, beside themselves. The lyrics are packed with theological problems, presenting Lubich as a kind of mediatrix. For example, 'if we can live with Jesus in our midst we owe it to you': it seems that Chiara 'gives' Jesus. If Protestants reject the idea common to the majority of Christians (Catholics, Orthodox, Eastern churches etc.) of the Virgin Mary, how come they accept Lubich as mediatrix? Meanwhile la Lubich sits there in the audience lapping it all up.
Then take a look at this sculpture of Mary, Mother of the Church in the Focolare movement's international centre in Castel Gandolfo (former papal audience hall donated to Chiara Lubich by ardent admirer 'Saint' John Paul II.
Pere Pierre Vignon, a French priest and canonist, former ecclesiastical judge of the provinces of Lyon and Clermont-Ferrand, wrote of this piece of sculpture:
The ideal of Chiara was embodied in 1987 by the great sculptor Benedetto Pietrogrande (1928-2019) in the chapel of the Castel Gandolfo convention centre in the group sculpture Mary, Mother of the Church. The 'Mother of the Church' has the features of Chiara Lubich and everyone is at her feet. You can recognise the faces: Igino [co-founder], Chiaretto [co-founder], the first focolarine, not forgetting Pope John Paul II. It is impossible to deny, by invoking the creative freedom of an artist who cast in bronze the programme Chiara gave to her movement, that he did so consciously, while the 'saint', still alive, accepted the sculpture without protest. One might suspect that not only did she allow herself to be idolised, but that she herself promoted this attitude...In the group Mary, Mother of the Church in Castel Gandolfo, Chiara Lubich is the centre from which Unity springs. Many cardinals and bishops have already celebrated mass before this 'mother of the church', so concrete and incarnate. Through this impersonation - that is, the action of deceiving by false appearances or mendacious assertions, of passing oneself off as someone or something one is not - we discover appropriation, diminishing, disguised by the Ideal of Unity. Unity belongs to everyone and not only to Chiara Lubich. Why is it that from now on, in the Catholic Church, whenever there is talk of Unity, it is necessary to invoke Chiara Lubich, as though she possessed its exclusive charisma?...There should be no spiritual 'robbery' in the Church. Why, then, should we have to go through Chiara Lubich's spiritual motherhood in order to embrace Unity?...Did she not say that one day the Church would wake up to discover itself Focolare? For such an awakening, clueless as to how it happened, you'd need to be drugged first."
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