Chiara Corbella was born to a Roman family and educated at Rome, where she met her future husband Enrico Petrillo in 2002 at age eighteen during a pilgrimage to Medjugorje. They married in September 2008 at the small Franciscan sanctuary of Assisi. Their first child, Maria Grazia Letizia, was diagnosed in utero in 2009 with anencephaly (a fatal congenital absence of the upper brain); they carried the pregnancy to term, baptized the baby at her birth (June 10, 2009), and Maria Grazia died thirty minutes after baptism in her parents' arms. Their second child, Davide Giovanni, was diagnosed in utero in 2010 with a fatal abdominal malformation; carried to term, baptized at birth (June 24, 2010), Davide died thirty-eight minutes after baptism.
Their third pregnancy began in late 2010. In the fifth month of pregnancy (May 2011) Chiara was diagnosed with a tongue carcinoma — a rare and aggressive cancer requiring immediate surgery and radio-chemotherapy. She and Enrico decided together to postpone all treatment (including the recommended fetus-protected partial surgery) until after the birth of the baby, to avoid any risk to the child. Francesco Petrillo was born healthy at thirty-eight weeks on May 30, 2011.
Chiara then began the aggressive treatment that her doctors had postponed at her request. The cancer had metastasized through her jaw and into the lymph nodes; over the following thirteen months — through three major surgeries, radiation, chemotherapy, and the progressive loss of speech, eye function, and mobility — she nursed and weaned the infant Francesco, oversaw his early development, and gave a sustained spoken-and-written witness (recorded by Enrico and circulated extensively in Italian Catholic networks) on the consolation of Christian motherhood under terminal illness. She died at Rome on June 13, 2012 at twenty-eight. The cause for her beatification was opened by the Diocese of Rome in 2018; she is now Servant of God.