In the Northern Italian city of
Trento in 1943, in the climate of violence and hatred of the
Second World War and Nazi Occupation of Northern Italy (under the puppet state known as
Republic of Salò), the young elementary school teacher
Chiara Lubich saw God's Love as the only thing that was not fallen in rubble. With a copy of the
Gospel from her spiritual father, she and few girls, while sheltering during air raids, started to live each phrase for the day or for the week. Of the many phrases lived she and her companions got struck deeply by the Jesus' prayer "that they all may be One". That prayer, completed with the "key" to achieve unity, Jesus' outcry "My God, why have you forsaken me?", are "the two faces of the medal that forms the movement". During the war this group of young girls and many others sequentially joined in helping those in the shelters and in the poorest parts of the town of Trento, sharing her vision that was later called "Ideal". In the aftermath of the
Second World War criticisms, misunderstandings and accusations began to spread against this new community in Trento. Living the Gospel, communicating experiences, sharing their few possessions and making unity their ideal, aroused suspicions of Protestantism or a new form of communism. Their radical way of living the Gospel that Chiara proposed attracted the accusation of "fanaticism", and the word "love", not customarily used in the Catholic sphere at that time, was likewise misunderstood. In 1948, the Italian politician and journalist
Igino Giordani, an
Italian Republic Constitution father, member of the
Italian Parliament and pioneer of
ecumenism joined the group, bringing social unity and politics as new dimensions of the ideal. Giordani is one of the co-founders, along with Fr.
Pasquale Foresi, who would work on the theological ground to answer the Catholic Church questions and later help found the movement main journal, New City Press, in 1964. The movement, even under adversities between 1949–50, spread rapidly throughout
Northern Italy and across Europe, then worldwide. In 1958, members of the movement from Europe began to travel to other continents at the request of people who wanted to know more about it. In 1958, it reached various countries in South America, in 1961 North America, in 1963 Africa, in 1966 Asia and 1967 Australia. Today it has 140,440 members in more than 180 countries. People more broadly involved in the movement are estimated by
the Vatican at 4.5 million. == Focolare towns ==