These words of Bishop Mario Meini, Bishop of Fiesole, in whose diocese the little town of Loppiano is situated, express well the feelings of the crowd of people present on February 27, 2011. The occasion was the closing of the diocesan phase of the beatification of the Servant of God, Renata Borlone. And whoever had known Renata knew that she would have been stunned by so much attention, she who always put herself in the last place and considered the other better than herself.

Born on May 30, 1930, in Aurelia, a province of Civitavecchia, Renata spent a happy and serene childhood, surrounded by the love of her parents; “I will never thank God enough,” she would often say, “for having given me the chance to experience life in a real family and above all for the love that existed between my parents.”

 

She received an education rich in human values, but little oriented to those of faith. During adolescence, Renata began to confront the problem of the existence of God, and she began to attend church. Between 15 and 19 years of age, thirsty for truth, she plunged herself headlong into studies that would probe into the deepest realities.
For this reason, she enrolled in the Department of Chemistry at “La Sapienza” University in Rome. “Mathematics fascinated me for its logic. I had moments of joy, of exultation when my mind was discovering something new. I was hoping to discover a piece of knowledge that in some way would enable me to embrace what was universal. I sought God in intelligent beings who could be a reflection of Him. I did not know then that only in the Creator-Love would I be able to discover Creation and its creatures and love them.”

It was May 8, 1949, a day she defined as “extraordinary,” when she participated in a meeting in which Graziella De Luca, one of the first companions of Chiara Lubich, spoke of the discovery of God-Love and of the new evangelical life begun in Trent while the war had been raging: “I remember that when I left the meeting, I knew I had found something. I had intuited that God is Love. That experience penetrated the depths of my being. I had lost the image of God as a judge who punishes the bad and rewards the good and I felt a God who was close to me.”

Shortly after, she met Chiara Lubich and felt God’s call to give herself to Him in the Focolare to help fulfill the prayer Jesus addressed to the Father before his death, ‘that all may be one’ (cf. Jn. 17, 21). In the following years, she would work for the Movement in Rome, Trent, Sassari, Parma, Trapani, Grenoble (France), and Milan. In 1967 at 37 years of age, Renata left for the School of Formation in Loppiano where she would spend 23 years of her life as co-director of the little city.