“Chiara Lubich - The way of unity, among history and prophecy”,is the tile of the biography written by Maurizio Gentilini, archivist and researcher at the Department of Human Sciences at the National Research Council in Rome, presented in Trento on the 13th of December.

Sociologist Ilaria Pedrini, historian Emanuele Curzel, musician Simonetta Bungaro and journalist Franco De Battaglia engaged in dialogue with the author, casting a glance - each from their own point of view - on wthat has been defined "the biography" of Chiara Lubich, on the centenary of her birth.

In fact, this is the firth biography of this outstanding trentine woman, 12 years afetr her death. A biography which does not rely on testimonies and rejects the fugacity of running news; and is based on a rigorous, patient and accurate work of historical research instead.

Thanks to this rigorous approach, the author managed to grasp the intangibility of a figure defined by Gentilini as "sweet and severe, empathetic and detached, simple and complex". The result is warm, participated, yet unbiased pages; not a portrait, but a landscape, which puts Chiara into the context of her times. A woman who shared with her feklow citizens the tragedies of the war, the bombing of the Portela borough, where she was born; the endless and tormented judgment of the Holy Office on her Work; the challenge of an active presence beyond the Berlin Wall; the extraordinary ability to engage in a dialogue of life in the ecumenical and interreligious field.

Her Work has been unanimously recognised as innovative since the beginning: the role of lays, that of the woman, the value of the Word read and lived without mediation, in a pure franciscan style; the communion of goods, the clearance of the word "love": all aspects which led her to be an anticipator and an inspirer of the Second Vatican Council.