On 21 April 1991, many years after his death, the Pope will announce to the whole world that that "little nun", a disciple of Don Guanella, born in Pianello Lario and died very young, in her short life quickly passed through the great stages of love towards God as those towards others. In fact, a "saint" is someone who manages to live the message of the Gospel in daily life.
It is not the great miracles that make saints, but the love and attention with which the little things of every day are built.
Here is a fragment of Sister Chiara's life scented with evangelical charity.
The fog that evening made everything more melancholic, sad and grey. The girls from the orphanage were already in bed.
Only the wardrobe window revealed a dim light.
Bent over a now worn skirt - its only value was the numerous mendings - Sister Chiara was trying to mend a tear, when she heard a knock on the door.
A leap in her heart and Chiara asked herself: "Who could it be at this time of night?". With a wave of her fingers she slipped the needle into her skirt, placed her on a stool and walked towards the entrance. The silence was broken only by the soft clatter of her hooves. She didn't even ask who was at the door, but she opened it with great enthusiasm and found herself in front of a nun with a little girl bundled up and wrapped in a white shawl like a plant after a heavy snowfall.
“Sister - the nun whispers to Chiara - I am traveling to Switzerland to accompany this little girl. The darkness caught us on the street. Would you do us the favor of hosting us for this night?”.
"Of course. Come in,” Sister Chiara whispered to her as she reactivated the wick of the lantern to give a little more light. In the light of the light bulb, two large bright eyes of a little girl who had skin as dark as night emerged from the shawl. The little girl was looking for her parents who had emigrated to nearby Switzerland. Sister Chiara made them sit in a small room and offered them something hot to eat and then accompanied them to rest.
“After a day of walking, and in this weather, you will be tired,” said Sister Chiara, indicating the bed to the nun. It was Sister Chiara's bed itself, the only one available, and she had given it up very calmly: she would have spent the night on a chair, happy to have more time to pray!
In those few years that she stayed at Don Guanella's side, Sister Chiara learned the wisdom of the cross, carried out of love in union with the crucified Jesus and embraced as a service to the poor.
The usual motto on Don Luigi's lips was: “Dear martens, we must learn to pray and suffer. Pray to learn to suffer with love and suffer with resignation to enter into the right climate of prayer."
For the Christian there is no other wisdom than the foolishness of the cross. And Chiara was the designated victim, the cornerstone of a great building: from her sufferings the work of charity began to expand its boundaries. First Como, then Milan, Rovigo, Rome, Calabria, Switzerland, the United States.
For days, in that month of April 1886, there had been an unusual movement in the hospice in Pianello del Lario. The orphans wondered why household goods, pots and chairs were piled up in a corner of the courtyard. Even Pietro, the boatman, who took passengers to Como via lake, had gone up in those days to "take a look" at the material. In addition to those poor household goods, the frequent and particular prayers in the church aroused curiosity, thus provoking a desire to participate in a birth that was still unknown but was now present in the air. Finally, shortly before April 6, Don Guanella satisfied legitimate curiosity and announced that a queen bee was about to swarm and bring the charity work to the very heart of the diocese, to Como. By now night had fallen when the strong arms of Pietro, the boatman, had pushed the boat out of the shoal.
Excluding the animals, it looked just like Noah's ark: of what poverty had managed to find to avoid dying of poverty, nothing was missing.
On those small things carried on the waves of the lake, invocations to the Providence of God descended, punctuated by the splash of the oars.
In the morning, at the pier of the city of Como, the few cold passers-by wondered who those "pilgrims" were, busy placing the objects of a miserable move on the shore of the lake. Someone shaking their head said: “It's Guanella stuff; that guy over there is either crazy or really a saint, in any case he is someone who thinks and plans and walks along paths different from ours". As and when God wanted, that first group of nuns and orphans dragged those poor bags towards the road that goes up to the town of Brunate.
When they arrived at their house, they were out of breath, their strength was exhausted and the fatigue from the sleepless night was starting to make itself felt. As soon as they placed their bundles in that bare and cold house, they immediately knelt on the bricks of the floor and chanted a prayer of thanks.
The seed was there ready to be sown and God's blessing was making that seed fruitful. By now the Don Guanella Work had moved its center of gravity to the very heart of the diocese and that house would have been the womb of many charitable foundations.
Happy to be able to suffer something for the love of Christ, they passed the first nights, but when in the evening the cold and humidity of the lake enveloped the houses of the city of Como, a dry and excruciating cough broke the silence of those unadorned walls: it was Sister Clear. During the day she was feverishly active; the poor had now learned the path of the House of Divine Providence, but at night Chiara paid the toll of his love for her with insomnia and chronic bronchitis.
That life won't last long. After a few months, Sister Chiara, with death in her heart, is forced to leave the new foundation and return to Pianello to be next to Don Guanella and thus be helped to donate her young existence as a holocaust of love for the good of the poor .
God had now marked a new boundary on the map of the civilization of love in his compassion for the poor: the hospitable tent for the poor had more spaces, more tables to feed many mouths and above all hearts capable of welcoming and sharing.

(from Don Guanella is a servant out of love and a juggler of Providence, New Frontiers Publishing)