she went to Chiang Mai in Thailand, where she had been asked to address 800 Buddhist monks and nuns. Again, she was the first Christian and the first laywoman to address them. Their Great Teacher, Ajahn Thong, explained, “The wise person is neither male nor female. When someone turns on a light in the darkness, one does not ask if the one who lit it was a man or a woman. Chiara is here to give us the light she has experienced”. In May of that same year, she was invited to the Malcolm Shabazz Mosque in New York, where once again she simply shared her Christian experience with 3,000 Muslims, referencing quotes from Islam that were similar to the Gospel, to which the crowd responded, “God is great!” At the end of the meeting, she made a pact of fraternity with their leader, Imam Warith Deen Mohammed. Three years later, they met again in Washington DC, with 6000 Christians and Muslims to celebrate an event called “Faith Communities Together”. Since then, this initiative has been repeated throughout the United States in many cities, bringing together the two communities for fellowship and common concrete projects. In Buenos Aires, in April 1998, Chiara met members of the Jewish community of Argentina and Uruguay at the invitation of the B'nai B'rith and other Jewish organizations. In 2001, she took her first trip to India invited by Kala Acharya, director of the Bharatiya Sanskriti Peetham University in Mumbai, who said, “It is time to break down the walls of separation and discover the garden of the other”. Two prestigious Hindu-Gandhian institution sin Tamil Nadu conferred on her the “Defender of Peace” Award. She returned in 2003 on the invitation of the leader of a vast Hindu movement, the Swadhyaya Movement. In 2002, among the official testimonies for peace offered by the representatives of the various churches and religions at the Day of Prayer for Peace in Assisi, presided over by Pope John Paul II, Chiara and Andrea Riccardi, founder of the Saint Egidio Community, gave the address on behalf of the Catholic Church. In 2004, at Westminster Central Hall in London, Chiara, speaking to a large audience of people of various religions and cultures, proposed a strategy of fraternal love that could mark a turning point for international relations, “because fraternity is God’s plan for the whole human family”. Dialogue with persons with