1920 - The birth of Chiara in Trent.  During the period of Fascism she lives years of extreme poverty: her socialist father lost his job on account of his political convictions.  To maintain herself through her studies she gave private lessons.

7 th December 1943 - Alone, she responds to God's call to give her whole life to God.

13th May 1944 - The night of one of the most violent bombings of Trent. Chiara's house was among the many houses destroyed. As her relatives fled into the nearby mountains to seek refuge, she decided to stay in Trent to help the new life that was being born around her. Amid the ruins of the city, she encounters a woman who has lost her senses through the suffering caused by the death of her four children. In their embrace, she hears the call to embrace the suffering of humanity.
It is among the poor of Trent that that which Chiara often calls the "divine adventure" begins.
From this experience the certainty that the Gospel, when it is lived to the letter gives rise to the most powerful of social revolutions: here we find the first indications of the social commitment of the Movement.

1948 - Chiara meets Igino Giordani, member of parliament, writer, journalist, pioneer in the field of ecumenism, and father of four. This meeting took place in the Italian parliament. He was to be co-founder, together with Chiara, of the Movement because of the contribution given by him in the context of the spirituality of unity's social incarnation, which gave rise to the New Families Movement and the New Humanity Movement.

1949 - This year marked the first encounter between Chiara and Pasquale Foresi, a young man who grew up in Catholic environments. Troubled by profound inner searching, he felt an intense need to couple Gospel and life in the Church.
    He was the first focolarino to become a priest, ordained in 1954. Always at the side of the foundress, he contributed among other things, to giving life to the Movement's theological studies, to starting the Cittą Nuova Publishing House and to building the little town of Loppiano. Througout the Movement's development, he has given a noteworthy contribution to concretizing its ecclesiastical and lay expressions. Along with Igino Giordani, he is considered to be a co-founder of the Movement.

1954 - The meeting in Vigo di Passa (near Trent) with escapees from the forced labour camps in Eastern Europe. Since 1960 the spirituality of unity and the Movement began to take shape clandestinely in those countries.

1956 - The Soviet invasion of Hungary. Faced with this dramatic development Chiara feels the urgency of bringing God back into society so that humanity could realise that it has its source of freedom and fraternity in Him.
This marks the birth of the "volunteers", people who are committed in the most diverse fields of action: from politics to the economy, from art to education. They were to become the animators of New Humanity Movement

1959 - In Europe many of the wounds provoked by the violence and hate of the Second World War remained. At the Mariapolis (summer gathering of the Movement) in the Dolomite Mountains, Chiara addresses a group of politicians inviting them to go beyond the boundaries of their respective nations and to "love the nation of the other as you love your own".
Indeed internationality soon becomes a hallmark of the Movement which rapidly spreads, firstly in Italy; and then, since 1952 in Europe and since 1959 in the other continents.
"Little towns" which begin to be born from 1965 on, with the birth of the first in Loppiano, together with international congresses, and the use of the media contribute to the formation of people who live for the ideal of a "united world".

1967 - In response to the growing crisis of the family in today's society, she founds the New Families Movement. 1968 - Young people start contesting throughout the world. Since 1966 Chiara Lubich proposes to the youth to live according to the radicalism of the Gospel as an answer to the profound desire for change claimed by young people everywhere. The Gen Movement is born (New Generation) which animates the wider "Young People for a United World" (1984).

1970 - From the very beginning there have been younger teenagers and children who have made the spirituality of unity their own. The third generation of the Movement who animate the vaster "Youth for Unity" movement is born.

1977 - Chiara receives the Templeton Prize for progress in religion and peace. The presence of many representatives of other religions at the ceremony brought about the beginning of the Movement's inter-religious dialogue.

1991 - Shortly after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, during a trip to Brazil, as a response to the situation of those who live in sub-human conditions in the outskirts of the metropolises there, Chiara launches a new project: the "Economy of Communion in Liberty". This quickly develops in various countries involving hundreds of businesses, giving rise to a new economic theory and praxis.

1995 - Two recognitions which she received from the mayor and bishop of her native city open a phase of public life which directly involve Chiara.

1996 - Honourary Degree in Social Sciences from the Catholic University of Lublin in Poland. Professor Adam Biela speaks of the "Copernican revolution in the Social Sciences, brought about by her having given life to a 'paradigm of unity' which shows the new psychological, social and economic dimensions which today's post-communist society has been waiting for in this new and difficult transitional phase".

1996 - "In an age when ethnic and religious differences too often lead to violent conflict, the spread of the Focolare Movement has also contributed to a constructive dialogue between persons, generations, social classes and peoples." This is the motivation of the 1996 UNESCO Prize for education to peace, awarded to Chiara in Paris.

1997-98 - Chiara became the first Christian, the first lay person, and the first woman to be invited to communicate her spiritual experience to a group of 800 Buddhist monks and nuns in Thailand (January 1997), to 3,000 Black Muslims in the Mosque of Harlem in New York (May 1997), and to the Jewish community in Buenos Aires (April 1998). New prospects for dialogue are opened. She received honourary degrees in various disciplines: from theology to philosophy, from economics to human and religious sciences, from social science to social communications. These were conferred not only by Catholic universities, but also by lay universities, in Poland, the Philippines, Taiwan, the United States, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina.

All of these represented "providential circumstances" which brought about new developments on a cultural level, in a epoch noted for the collapse of values. In May 1997 she visited the United Nations, where she made a speech regarding the unity of peoples in the "Glass Palace".

In September 1998 in Strasbourg she will be presented with the Prize for Human Rights '98 by the Council of Europe, for her work "in defence of individual and social rights".