LEadership

Maria Voce was elected president of the Focolare Movement on 7 July 2008 by the General Assembly of the Focolare. She is the first focolarina to succeed the founder, Chiara Lubich, who died on the 14th of March of the same year. She was born in Ajello Calabro, Cosenza, Italy, on 16 July 1937, the first of seven children. Her father was a doctor; her mother a housewife. During her last year of law school in Rome (1959) she met a group of focolarini at the university and was fascinated by their Gospel witness. Upon completion of her studies, she became the first woman lawyer in her city’s court system. Later she studied Theology and Canon Law. In 1963, she felt the unexpected and “overwhelming” call of God to follow in the way of Chiara Lubich and she immediately responded. From 1964 to 1972 she was in Sicily, in the Focolare Centres of Syracuse and Catania.From 1972 to 1978 she belonged to Chiara Lubich’s personal secretariat and for the following ten years she lived in the Focolare Centre of Istanbul where she established ecumenical and interreligious relationships, especially with the then Patriarch of Constantinople, Demetrius I, and with numerous metropolitans including the now Patriarch Bartholemew I, as well as with representatives of various Churches.As a law expert, from 1995 she was a member of the Abba School, the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies chaired by Chiara Lubich. From 2000 she was also co-responsible for the international commission, “Communion and Law,” a network of academics and professionals involved in law. From 2002 until their approval, which came in 2007, she worked directly with Chiara Lubich in updating the General Statutes of the Movement. On 24 November 2009 Benedict XVI appointed her as a Consultor for the Pontifical Council for the Laity. Maria Voce was re-elected as President of the Focolare Movement for a second consecutive term in September 2014.