Venerable Carlo Acutis and his love for the Eucharist

The cross of the German “Synodal Way” / Maximilian von Lachner / Synodaler Weg

CNA Newsroom, Sep 10, 2022 / 21:28 pm (CNA).
In a move aimed at achieving what critics have compared to communist councils in the Soviet Union, participants of the G… […]

Fatima, Portugal, May 11, 2017 / 05:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The niece of Fatima visionary Sr. Lucia dos Santos said her aunt was a normal person like everyone else, but shared some personal advice that her saintly relative used to give: to pray at least something every day.  

“She always asked me to pray the rosary every day, because there were many who did not pray,” Maria dos Anjos, niece of Fatima visionary Lucia dos Santos, told CNA in an interview.

“This was what Our Lady asked: that we pray the rosary every day. Because there were many who didn’t pray and because of this many souls went to hell because there was no one to pray for them,” she said.

Anjos, who only saw her aunt when they went to visit her in the convent, said the advice Lucia always gave her was to pray daily, and “that I not forget.”

She recalled that in a few of the conversations she had with her aunt, she confessed to not finishing the rosary because she was tired, having worked hard in the fields all day.

In response, Lucia didn’t reproach, but instead told her to “always start it, and if you don’t finish, Our Lady will finish it.”

Anjos, 97, is the daughter of one of Lucia’s older sisters. She grew up in the house directly across the street from where Lucia and her family used to live, and continues to live there with one of her sons today. Every evening she can be seen sitting on the front porch area with a rosary in hand.

While now there are paved streets and cars driving past the houses and tourist shops set up near Lucia’s house, which is now preserved as a museum and is open to the public for visits, Anjos said that when she was growing up, “there wasn’t anything here…just a mountain and some sheep and donkeys.”

Although she was only one year old at the time Lucia entered the convent, Anjos said her family would go to visit whenever they could.

Lucia, she said, “was a sister like the others. There was no difference. She was just like the other sisters who were in the convent,” and was always “joyful” – both as a child and as a religious sister.

Recalling memories that her mother had shared of her and Lucia’s childhood, Anjos said Lucia was a normal child like everyone else, and never lacked playmates.

“Many children came to play with her because their parents went to the wine estates and left their children here, because there was always someone at the house of Lucia’s mother who looked after the kids,” Anjos said.

Her grandmother and mother to Lucia, Maria Rosa Farreira, was catechist, and would also teach the children who came to the house while their parents were away.

Faith was always a big part of their family, even before the apparitions, Anjos said, explaining that “we always prayed the rosary, we went to Mass every Sunday, we did what we saw that could be done.”

After the apparitions of Mary, “we continued, doing more, and remembering that Our Lady asked us to pray more and to make more sacrifices,” she said, jesting that “we do our homework well.”

She recalled being able to attend Mass with Pope John Paul II during one of his three visits to Fatima, saying she was able to receive communion from him alongside her aunt, Sister Lucia.

“When communion came, I received communion from his hands, from the hands of the Holy Father. I liked it a lot,” she said, adding “you always like good things, do you not?”

Though she wasn’t able to speak with John Paul, Anjos said she was still “very happy,” and is equally content to welcome Pope Francis during his May 12-13 visit for the centenary of the Fatima apparitions.

During the visit, Francis will also canonized the two other Fatima visionaries – Francisco and Jacinta Marto – who were Lucia’s younger cousins, but died shortly after the apparitions took place.  

“I am very glad they will be canonized,” she said, explaining that in her and her family’s mind, the siblings were already saints. Though it will now become official, she said she believes devotion to them will be “the same,” since people had already viewed them as holy.

While she’s sad she won’t be able to attend this Mass personally, Anjos said she’ll be watching it on TV, which she said is enough to make her happy.

Noting an uptick in visits to the shrine, Anjos said that many people, her family included would pray the rosary and visit the shrine after the apparitions, but “it seems that we have more devotion.”

“I think that faith has increased here and in the whole world,” she said. “At least I think it has, because many people come here, and that’s why we have to (pray) more and more. I think it did a lot of good for people to have Our Lady appear here.”

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Brussels, Belgium, Jul 25, 2018 / 12:30 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A recent government report revealed that in 2016 and 2017, three minors were euthanized in Belgium, amid a profound rise in the number of individuals legally procuring their own deaths.

“In all three cases, the patients were suffering from insufferable and incurable conditions which were already in a terminal phase,” Alan Hope reported July 18 in the Brussels Times.

The euthanization of children was legalized in Belgium in 2014. The practice had first been introduced in 2003 for adults.

Belgium’s federal control and evaluation committee recently issued a report on the use of euthanasia.

There were 2,028 euthanasia deaths in 2016, and 2,309 in 2017, a 13 percent rise year-on-year. The report found that cancer is the primary reason individuals seek euthanasia.

Most were people between 60 and 89 who exhibited multiple illnesses or ailments. 710 of those euthanized in 2016 and 2017 sought their death because of conditions like sight loss or incontinence. 19 young people, between the ages of 18 and 29, were euthanized in 2016 and 2017. 77 people sought euthanasia because of psychiatric suffering.

 Men and women are equally represented, but three times as many Dutch speakers as French speakers requested the procedure. Dutch speakers represent roughly 60 percent of Belgians, and French speakers 40 percent.

The number of persons procuring euthanasia in their homes has also increased.

Belgium’s law allows minors of any age who are terminally ill to request euthanasia. Parental consent, as well as the agreement of doctors and psychiatrists, is required.

When euthanasia for minors was legalized, a governing member of the Pontifical Academy for Life told CNA the development was “dreadful.”

“They are appealing to ‘rights of children’ to make these determinations, but children aren’t capable of making those types of self-determinations,” Haas said.

“So what is really going to happen is that, under the rules of children making these decisions for themselves, parents and physicians are going to be making those decisions, for children, to eliminate them because they’ve become excessive burdens on them and on the rest of society.”

“It’s a terrible situation. Unbelievable, if I may say so.”

The euthanization of minors is also permitted in the Netherlands, though they must be at least 12 years of age.

Teaching in his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae, St. John Paul II wrote that “euthanasia is a grave violation of the law of God, since it is the deliberate and morally unacceptable killing of a human person. This doctrine is based upon the natural law and upon the written word of God, is transmitted by the Church’s Tradition and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.”

“Even when not motivated by a selfish refusal to be burdened with the life of someone who is suffering, euthanasia must be called a false mercy, and indeed a disturbing ‘perversion’ of mercy … Moreover, the act of euthanasia appears all the more perverse if it is carried out by those, like relatives, who are supposed to treat a family member with patience and love, or by those, such as doctors, who by virtue of their specific profession are supposed to care for the sick person even in the most painful terminal stages.”

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