Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Rome (Agenzia Fides) - Natalia Dallapiccola, the first to join Chiara Lubich on earth in 1943, is the first to reach her, only a few days later, in eternal life. Natalia was 83. She died, due to weakening of heart and lungs, yesterday 2nd April in the evening at Rocca di Papa, surrounded by those first companions of the early times with whom she was living.
Natalia Dallapiccola was born on 27 June 1924, in the village of Fornace in the mountains of the northern Italian region of Trent. She met Chiara in Trent, where she lived with her family, in June 1943, while she was experiencing a profound crisis following the death of her father and the raging war. Natalia was with Chiara at the first focolare opened in Trent, in piazza Cappuccini. Later she followed her to Rome. She was to play a determinant role in 1959 in the founding of a focolare in West Berlin and in spreading the Movement in eastern Europe. The Stasi, the German secret police, writes in its reports of a “programme of the ‘Fucolar’ Movement to create “strong religious unity despite different national opinions”.
Natalia was to be part of the first group of people to cross the wall in 1962, with men and women Focolari doctors called by the Bishop of Leipsig to work in the city's Catholic hospital short of medical staff due to flight to the West. She was later in contact with people in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Lithuania, where the Movement's first communities were opened. In 1976, due to ill health, she returned to the Movement's Centre. In 1977 Chiara entrusted her with the development of interreligious dialogue, and Natalia built close relations with various leaders of the Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist world … From the outset, thanks to the particular profundity with which she lived the spirituality of unity, she played an important role in the spiritual formation of the members of the Movement. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 3/4/2008; righe 21, parole 296)
