‘Heart speaks to heart’: Benedict XVI sends message for his brother’s funeral Mass

Dublin, Ireland, Aug 22, 2018 / 12:27 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In the face of attacks on the family, the Church should strive to imitate the Holy Family, which shines through the darkness, said Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Bombay.

“In the midst of the… […]

Rome Newsroom, Oct 1, 2020 / 09:00 am (CNA).-  

The tomb of Venerable Carlo Acutis was opened for public veneration Thursday ahead of the computer-programming teen’s beatification. 

A spokeswoman for Acutis’ beatification told CNA that the entire body was present, but “not incorrupt.”

“Today we … see him again in his mortal body. A body that has passed, in the years of burial in Assisi, through the normal process of decay, which is the legacy of the human condition after sin has removed it from God, the source of life. But this mortal body is destined for resurrection,” Archbishop Domenico Sorrentino of Assisi said at a Mass at the opening of the tomb Oct. 1.

The bishop explained that Acutis’ body was “reassembled with art and love.”

Acutis, who died of leukemia in 2006 at the age of 15, was known for his computer-programming skills, and love of the Eucharist and the Virgin Mary.

The heart of Acutis, which can now be considered a relic, will be displayed in a reliquary in the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi. His mother said that his family had wanted to donate his organs when he died, but were unable to do so because of the leukemia.

“Carlo is a boy of our time. A boy of the internet age, and a model of holiness of the digital age, as Pope Francis presented him in his letter to young people around the world. The computer … has become a way of going through the streets of the world, like the first disciples of Jesus, to bring to hearts and homes the announcement of true peace, that which quenches the thirst for the infinite that inhabits the human heart,” Sorrentino said.

The rector for the Sanctuary of Spoliation in Assisi, where Acutis’ tomb is located, told EWTN that reconstruction work on Acutis’ face was necessary before the public viewing of the tomb. 

Acutis had brain hemorrhaging at the time of his death, and he offered his suffering for the pope and the Church. 

“His body was discovered to be fully integral, not intact, but integral, having all its organs. Work was done on his face,” Fr. Carlos Acácio Gonçalves Ferreira said.

“In some way, his earthly face will be seen again. But that face — let us not forget — by now does not point to itself, but to God,” Archbishop Sorrentino said.

Acutis’ tomb is open for public veneration Oct. 1-17 in Assisi to allow as many people as possible to make a prayerful visit in the weeks before and after his beatification Oct. 10, despite coronavirus measures limiting attendance.

In his interview with EWTN, Ferreira lauded Acutis as a witness that holiness is attainable for teenagers. 

In the tomb, Acutis is dressed in the casual clothes he wore in daily life. While he was not buried in this clothes, it is hoped that they will give evidence of the teen’s life.

“For the first time in history we will see a saint dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a sweater,” the rector said.

“This is a great message for us, we can feel holiness not as a distant thing but as something very much within everyone’s reach because the Lord is the Lord of everyone.”

In the year before he died, the Italian teen researched Eucharistic miracles to create a website cataloging and sharing this information with others.

As part of the 17-day celebration of Acutis’ beatification in Assisi, two churches are hosting exhibitions of the Eucharistic miracles and Marian apparitions cataloged by Acutis. 

Acutis’ tomb is in Assisi’s Sanctuary of the Spoliation, where a young St. Francis of Assisi is said to have cast off his rich clothes in favor of a poor habit.

“Carlo Acutis, like St. Francis, had in common, in addition to love for Jesus and in particular for the Eucharist, a great love for the poor,” Archbishop Sorrentino said as he announced Oct. 1 that a soup kitchen would be opened near the Sanctuary of the Spoliation in remembrance of Acutis.

Carlo’s mother, Antonia Salzano (pictured above), said that she was very moved by the opening of her son’s tomb for public veneration.

“We are thrilled that finally Carlo’s tomb has been opened, especially because the faithful that Carlo has scattered around the world will be able to see him and to be able to venerate him in a stronger and more engaging way,” she said.

“We hope that through the exposition of Carlo’s body, the faithful can raise their prayers to God with more fervor and faith who through Carlo invites us all to have more faith, hope, and love for him, and for our brothers just as Carlo did in his earthly life. We pray that Carlo will intercede for all of us with God and obtain many graces for us.”

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Rome, Italy, Mar 6, 2019 / 03:10 am (CNA).- As Christians prepare to engage in the fasting and abstinence of Lent, they can find guidance in the words of Pope St. Leo the Great’s sermons.

Stressing Lenten discipline as a way to struggle against our sins and against the devil’s temptations, the fifth century pope advised self-scrutiny, purification, forgiveness of enemies and almsgiving to the poor.

“Let us prepare our souls for fighting with temptations, and understand that the more zealous we are for our salvation, the more determined must be the assaults of our opponents,” he said in his Lenten sermons, elsewhere adding “there are no works of power, dearly-beloved, without the trials of temptations, there is no faith without proof, no contest without a foe, no victory without conflict.”

Pope Leo I was involved in the theological questions of the fifth century, most famously affirming Christ’s two nature, human and divine, for the Council of Chalcedon.

He also led a delegation which successfully negotiated with Attila the Hun to turn his invading forces away from Rome.

He was named a Doctor of the Church in the eighteenth century. His writings and sermons proved enduring and influential. While some of his comments are specific to his time, as a whole he offers special advice for Lent.

True peace and true freedom come only “when the flesh is ruled by the judgment of the mind, and the mind is directed by the will of God,” he said in his sermons.

For St. Leo the Great, the Christians’ enemies are often our vices, disordered desires and sins.

“We cannot otherwise prevail against our adversaries, unless we prevail against our own selves,” he counseled. The contrary desires of flesh and spirit must be disciplined, and the mind will lose to the body if bodily desires become too strong.

When the mind is subject to God and delights in heavenly gifts, when it has “trampled underfoot the allurements of earthly pleasure” and has not allowed sin to reign, Leo says, “reason will maintain a well-ordered supremacy, and its strongholds no strategy of spiritual wickedness will cast down.”

“Christian people, whatever the amount of their abstinence, should rather desire to satisfy themselves with the Word of God than with bodily food,” said Leo the Great.

He counseled self-scrutiny to root out discord and wrong desires and to be attentive to God’s commandments. Citing St. Paul, he said Lenten fasting is a time to cleanse ourselves “from every defilement of flesh and spirit.”

“Now let godly minds boldly accustom themselves to forgive faults, to pass over insults, and to forget wrongs,” he said in one sermon.

“Let all discords and enmities be laid aside, and let no one think to have a share in the Paschal feast that has neglected to restore brotherly peace,” he said in another.

Care for the poor and others in need should be an even greater priority.

“Let us not pass over the groans of the poor with deaf ear, but with prompt kindness bestow our mercy on the needy, that we may deserve to find mercy in the judgment,” said the saint, later adding “let each bestow on the weak and destitute those dainties which he denies himself.”

“Let our humaneness be felt by the sick in their illnesses, by the weakly in their infirmities, by the exiles in their hardships, by the orphans in their destitution, and by solitary widows in their sadness: in the helping of whom there is no one that cannot carry out some amount of benevolence,” he continued.

Warning against the dangers of spiritual pride and hypocrisy, he also gave advice on how to follow Lenten disciplines.

“The self-restraint of the religious should not be gloomy, but sincere; no murmurs of complaint should be heard from those who are never without the consolation of holy joys,” he said, adding “no one is so holy that he ought not to be holier, nor so devout that he might not be devouter.”

At times, the foes of Christians are not simply the flesh, but even the demonic, he said. The approach of Easter makes the devil grow “furious” and “consumed with the strongest jealousy and now tortured with the greatest vexation.”

It is a time when “the Christian army has to combat him, and any that have grown lukewarm and slothful, or that are absorbed in worldly cares, must now be furnished with spiritual armor and their ardor kindled for the fray by the heavenly trumpet.”

The approaching baptism of new Christians at Easter, and the growing penitence of lapsed Christians, is also a target of the devil’s anger.

“For he sees whole tribes of the human race brought in afresh to the adoption of God’s sons and the offspring of the New Birth multiplied through the virgin fertility of the Church,” St. Leo the Great said. “He sees himself robbed of all his tyrannical power, and driven from the hearts of those he once possessed, while from either sex, thousands of the old, the young, the middle-aged are snatched away from him, and no one is debarred by sin either of his own or original.”

The devil sees, too, those who have lapsed, “deceived by his treacherous snares,” now becoming “washed in the tears of penitence” and seeking mercy and reconciliation in the Church.

Leo the Great also promoted fasting as a way to prepare to conquer earthly foes.

When the Hebrews and Israelites were oppressed by the Philistines “for their scandalous sins,” they restored their mental and physical powers by commanding a fast in order to be able to overcome their enemies.

“For they understood that they had deserved that hard and wretched subjection for their neglect of God’s commands, and evil ways, and that it was in vain for them to strive with arms unless they had first withstood their sin,” he said.

Abstinence from food and drink was “the discipline of strict correction,” he said. In order to defeat their foes, they “first conquered the allurements of the palate in themselves.”

Similarly, those of us who face opposition and conflict “may be cured by a little carefulness, if only we will use the same means.”

Though all seasons of the year are full of God’s blessings, St. Leo the Great said, Lent is a time when “all men’s minds should be moved with greater zeal to spiritual progress.” Lenten discipline “should heal us and restore the purity of our minds, during which the faults of other times might be redeemed by pious acts and removed by chaste fasting.”

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