Pasquale Foresi had heard about Chiara Lubich, her spirituality and her life experience, from one of her first companions, Graziella De Luca. It was at Christmas 1949 that he met Chiara for the first time.
Igino Giordani remembers that first meeting: “There was a gathering attended by Giulio Marchesi, Antonio Petrilli, Enzo Fondi and Marino Fornari from Rome, Pasquale Foresi from Pistoia, and others: a total of 42 people. Foresi did not speak for the first three days. He was the first to be beside Chiara or at her feet, listening to her avidly, as if thirsty to hear more. Eventually he burst into tears and rushed back to Rome to ask his father for permission to enter the focolare”[1].Two things were remarkable in that meeting: the speed with which Pasquale Foresi understood Chiara; and the illumination with which Chiara glimpsed his mission within the Movement in the following years [2].
While the meeting between Chiara Lubich and Igino Giordani generated within her spiritual insights, mystical understandings and at the same time an openness towards humanity, her meeting with Pasquale Foresi meant that those illuminations and that openness found various ways of being achieved and the right tools for doing so.