Blessed Carlo Acutis

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News Briefs

A relic of Blessed Carlo Acutis’ heart is coming to New York

March 18, 2022 Catholic News Agency 3
A reliquary containing relics of Blessed Carlo Acutis at the Church of Sant’Angela Merici in Rome, Oct 11, 2021. / Daniel Ibáñez/CNA.

Rome Newsroom, Mar 18, 2022 / 06:35 am (CNA).

A relic of Blessed Carlo Acutis’ heart is coming to New York in the first week of April.

Archbishop Domenico Sorrentino of Assisi will personally take the first-class relic from Italy to New York City on April 3.

The relic is a fragment of Acutis’ pericardium, the membrane that surrounds and protects the heart. It will be present for the U.S. bishops’ National Eucharistic Revival campaign, of which the Italian Blessed is a patron.

In the Catholic Church, relics are physical objects that have a direct association with the saints. Veneration of relics is a Scripture-based tradition practiced in the Church throughout the centuries.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, will offer a Mass with the relic in the Church of St. Rita in the Bronx on April 7.

Acutis was a young Catholic from Italy with a passionate devotion to the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist and an aptitude for computer programming.

He died of leukemia in 2006 at the age of 15, offering his suffering for the pope and the Church.

Acutis became the first millennial to be beatified by the Catholic Church in October 2020. His tomb is located in the Shrine of the Renunciation, which is part of the Church of St. Mary Major in Assisi.

Pope Francis has said that Blessed Carlo’s “witness shows today’s young people that true happiness is found by putting God in first place and serving Him in our brothers and sisters, especially the least.”

During his visit to the U.S. on April 3-8, Archbishop Sorrentino will offer a Mass with the relic for 2,400 high school students at Saint Anthony’s High School in South Huntington in the Diocese of Rockville Center.

The bishop of Assisi will also lead a holy hour for young people and adults at the Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in the Diocese of Brooklyn.

“It is a joy for me to bring this relic from Assisi,” Sorrentino said in a March 18 press release from the Diocese of Assisi-Nocera Umbra-Gualdo Tadino.

“My prayer is that the presence of the relic of Blessed Carlo will arouse a desire in our American brothers and sisters, especially young people, not to waste their lives, but to make them a masterpiece, like Carlo chose in our time and St. Francis before him,” he said.

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News Briefs

The miracle attributed to Carlo Acutis’ prayers

October 12, 2021 Catholic News Agency 0
Mattheus (left) holds a photo of Carlo Acutis (right), whose prayers are attributed with the boy’s healing. / Campo Grande News

CNA Staff, Oct 12, 2021 / 08:30 am (CNA).

The beatification of Carlo Acutis took place Oct. 10, 2020 after a miracle attributed to his prayers and the grace of God. In Brazil, a boy named Mattheus was healed from a serious birth defect called an annular pancreas after he and his mother asked Acutis to pray for his healing.

Mattheus was born in 2009 with a serious condition that caused him difficulty eating and serious abdominal pain. He was unable to keep any food in his stomach, and vomited constantly.

By the time Mattheus was nearly four years old, he weighed only 20 pounds, and lived on a vitamin and protein shake, one of the few things his body could tolerate. He was not expected to live long.

His mother, Luciana Vianna, had spent years praying for his healing.

At the same time, a priest friend of the family, Fr. Marcelo Tenorio, learned online about the life of Carlo Acutis, and began praying for his beatification. In 2013 he obtained a relic from Carlo’s mother, and he invited Catholics to a Mass and prayer service in his parish, encouraging them to ask Acutis’ intercession for whatever healing they might need.

Mattheus’ mother heard about the prayer service. She decided she would ask Acutis to intercede for her son. In fact, in the days before the prayer service, Vianna made a novena for Acutis’ intercession, and explained to her son that they could ask Acutis to pray for his healing.

On the day of the prayer service, she took Mattheus and other family members to the parish.

Fr. Nicola Gori, the priest responsible for promoting Acutis’ sainthood cause, told Italian media what happened next:

“On October 12, 2013, seven years after Carlo’s death, a child, affected by a congenital malformation (annular pancreas), when it was his turn to touch the picture of the future blessed, expressed a singular wish, like a prayer: ‘I wish I could stop vomiting so much.’ Healing began immediately, to the point that the physiology of the organ in question changed,” Fr. Gori said.

On the way home from the Mass, Mattheus told his mother that he was already cured. At home, he asked for French fries, rice, beans, and steak – the favorite foods of his brothers.

He ate everything on his plate. He didn’t vomit. He ate normally the next day, and the next. Vianna took Mattheus to physicians, who were mystified by Mattheus’ healing.

Mattheus’ mother told Brazilian media she sees in the miracle an opportunity to evangelize.

“Before, I didn’t even use my cell phone, I was averse to technology. Carlo changed my way of thinking, he was known for talking about Jesus on the Internet, and I realized that my testimony would be a way to evangelize and give hope to other families. Today I understand that everything new can be good, if we use it for good, ” she told reporters.

A version of this story was first reported by ACI Digital, CNA’s Portugese-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA. This story was originally published on Oct. 10, 2020.


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