A relic of Blessed Carlo Acutis will be displayed for veneration April 18 at a school in Córdoba, Argentina, marking the start of a tour of schools in the country, with the goal of making the “cyber-apostle of the Eucharist” better known.
The first-class relic will be enthroned at the 11:00 a.m. Mass at the Villa Eucharistic School, which is part of the Fasta Educational Network.
According to their website, Fasta “is a community of laity, priests and consecrated women with a love filled with hope for God, Church and Country, who seek to illuminate culture from a life of spiritual formation and daily commitment.”
Local clergy, Fasta members and other Catholic schools, movements and parishes will participate in the veneration of the relic, which will be broadcast live on Fasta’s YouTube channel.
Born in 1991, Acutis is the first millennial to be beatified by the Catholic Church.
The young Italian computer whiz, who died of leukemia at 15 offering his suffering for the pope and the Church, was beatified last October at a Mass at the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi. He is now one step away from canonization.
Argentina has three relics of Blessed Carlo Acutis.
The first is kept in the Our Lady of the Pillar Basilica in Buenos Aires. The second relic, entrusted to the Argentina Fátima Mission, tours Buenos Aires along with the International Exhibition of Eucharistic Miracles.
The exhibition, which consists of 136 Eucharistic miracles from around the world, was the result of three years of research, compilation and design by Blessed Acutis.
The third relic, a piece of the teen’s skin, came in January 2021 in response to a request made to the Friends of Carlo Acutis Association in Italy by Archbishop Carlos Ñáñez of Córdoba and the chaplain of Villa Eucharistic School, Fr. Pedro Giunta Lange.
Fasta Youth has organized the tour of this relic with the theme “Influencer of God, apostle of the young” in collaboration with the Fatima Mission and the Holy Face Foundation. Fasta Youth is a group that brings together members of the youth centers, students and graduates of the Fasta Educational Network.
The Villa Eucharistic school’s press release noted that “since from the moment of its foundation by the Spanish Adoration Sisters, [the school] was consecrated to the ‘Eucharistic Jesus,’ just as Acutis himself had done.”
The school’s goal “is to become a center of praise and Eucharistic adoration open to all the faithful, but especially to the young,” the statement said.
When the tour comes to the town of San Carlos de Bariloche on May 3, the school located there will be renamed Fasta Carlo Acutis School.
The tour will continue until August 6 and includes schools located in the cities of San Martín de los Andes, Buenos Aires, San Francisco, Lobos, Mendoza, San Juan, Jujuy, Salta, Mar del Plata, Tucumán, Coronel Suárez and Catamarca.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
Daisy Sandoval in the Darién Gap. / Credit: Courtesy of Daisy Sandoval
ACI Prensa Staff, Apr 29, 2023 / 10:00 am (CNA).
Daisy Sandoval is a 25-year-old single mother who left Venezuela in February in search of the “American dream.” Trusting in … […]
A young woman holds a pro-life sign during a rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., on June 24, 2023, marking the first anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. / Joseph Portolano/CNA
Washington D.C., Jun 25, 2023 / 06:40 am (CNA).
Marking the first anniversary of Roe being overturned, a group of pro-life leaders rallied hundreds to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial Saturday with the message that they were united around the fight for full, legal protection for the unborn from the moment of conception in all 50 states.
Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, told those gathered on a sunny, hot summer day that while she celebrated the 25 states that have passed strong pro-life laws, “we are in fact living in a divided states of America” where “a person’s location determines if they will survive the abortion gauntlet as we did.”
Hawkins said the country must become “an America where every human being is recognized as the unrepeatable person as they are with equal rights and equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed, not because of what state their mother resides in or if they are perceived to be convenient or the circumstances of their conception.”
Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, addresses the crowd at a pro-life rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial on June 24, 2023, marking the first anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Joseph Portolano/CNA
Hawkins told CNA that pro-life leaders are uniting around the belief “that every human being is a human person at conception” and that the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal justice clauses should be equally applied to persons in the womb.
“At a very minimum if you’re running for federal office, you should be able to acknowledge that abortion is a federal issue,” she said. “We want to see every presidential contender join with us to acknowledge what is so clearly written in the Fourteenth Amendment: that all human beings are human persons and deserve equal protection of our laws.”
Lila Rose, president of the pro-life group Live Action, called the Fourteenth Amendment “one of the most beautiful notes in our national song” and lamented that “when it comes to preborn children we have failed to extend these protections.”
Speaking at a rally in front of of the Lincoln Memorial on June 24, 2023, Lila Rose, president of the pro-life group Live Action, called it a “tragic contradiction” that “while our society celebrates advancements in prenatal care and technology, we simultaneously deny personhood and rights, the personhood and rights of these very same children.”. Joseph Portolano/CNA
Rose called it a “tragic contradiction” that “while our society celebrates advancements in prenatal care and technology, we simultaneously deny personhood and rights, the personhood and rights of these very same children. It is inconceivable that we would selectively deny these rights to one group of human beings solely based on their location: the womb.”
Republican presidential candidate and former Vice President Mike Pence, who recently called on his fellow GOP presidential candidates to join him in backing a “minimum” nationwide 15-week abortion limit, made an appearance at the rally.
“As we celebrate this anniversary, let us here resolve that we will work and we will pray as never before to advance the cause of life in the laws of the land in every state in America. That we will support women in crisis pregnancies with resources and support for their care, for the unborn, and for the newborn as never before,” Pence said.
Former Vice President Mike Pence, a 2024 GOP presidential candidate, addresses the crowd at a pro-life rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial on June 24, 2023, marking the first anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Joseph Portolano/CNA
“We stand for the babies and their unalienable right to life,” he said, pledging that he and his family “will never rest and never relent until we restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law in every state in the land.”
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of SBA Pro-life America, shared words of advice for the growing list of 2024 presidential candidates: “Get your act together. Figure out what you’re for and advance it. Don’t wait,” she urged.
“We have consensus in this country,” she added. “Start with that and be the president you’re called to be in justice and love for moms and justice and love for their babies.” Consistent Gallup polling shows that the majority of Americans would prefer to limit abortion to the first three months of pregnancy.
There were many young people in the crowd at the Lincoln Memorial, including Katriel Nyman, a 17-year-old from Washington state who is with Students for Life Tri-Cities. She told CNA that it was “really encouraging to see a bunch of people who believe in rights from conception.”
She said she’d “like to see more pro-lifers continue to persevere through this” post-Dobbs fight because “even if abortion isn’t legal in your state, you should be fighting for the rights of infants that are soon to be born in other states.”
Sameerah Munshi, a recent graduate of Brown University who is interning with the Religious Freedom Institute, holds a sign with a verse from the Quran about the sanctity of life that reads “We have dignified the children of Adam,” at a pro-life rally at the Lincoln Memorial on June 24, 2023. Lauretta Brown/CNA
Sameerah Munshi, a recent graduate of Brown University who is interning with the Religious Freedom Institute, held a sign with a verse from the Quran about the sanctity of life that read “We have dignified the children of Adam.”
She told CNA that she wanted to make her voice heard as a Muslim who believes, based on her faith, that abortion is wrong in most cases. She said many Muslims followers feel, as she does, that life begins “in the first couple weeks after conception.”
Munshi said that in the year since the Dobbs decision, “a lot of people that I know who don’t have strong opinions on abortion have been coming out either in favor or against” abortion. She sees it as valuable that there’s more discourse about the abortion issue and people are “coming to more conclusions for themselves as opposed to maybe rhetoric that they’ve seen in the news or rhetoric that they feel has been a part of their political platform.”
Jessica Newell, a Catholic student who is interning with Live Action and entering her third year at Coastal Carolina University, told CNA that “it’s so important for people who are indoctrinated by this culture to learn the truth about biology and the truth about God and that they’re made in the image of God.”
She emphasized that the pro-life movement still has so much to do and part of that work is “letting people know that they’re loved, that is a big step in changing the culture to a culture of life.”
Melissa Ohden, who survived a saline-infusion abortion at 31 weeks gestation, stands alongside her oldest daughter Olivia, 15, at a pro-life rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., on June 24, 2023. Joseph Portolano/CNA
Melissa Ohden, who survived a saline-infusion abortion at 31 weeks gestation, stood at the rally alongside her oldest daughter Olivia, 15, and a sign which read “Babies survive abortions. I am one of them.”
“This was a very personal thing for Roe to be overturned,” she told CNA, “It is a day that we can celebrate, but it has not been a chance to pause, take our breath, it has been a time of continuing to hit the ground running.”
In her work heading the Abortion Survivors Network, Ohden said that since the Dobbs decision she’s heard from “more women than ever reaching out to us after their chemical abortions have failed.” She said it’s important to reach moms who are vulnerable to chemical abortions which make up the majority of abortions in the country.
Ohden said that since Dobbs the pro-life movement “has continued to be the side that is providing resources and support whether it’s in communities, at the state level, pushing for federal policy that supports mothers and children and families in a greater way.”
Her daughter Olivia said it was “amazing” to be at the rally with her mom and called the issue an emotional one because “people like my mom should be protected no matter who they are, where they are.”
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Nov 21, 2022 / 11:20 am (CNA).
Sen. Mike Lee of Utah is calling on the 12 Republican senators who voted to advance the Respect for Marriage Act (RFMA) to adopt protections for Ame… […]
Leave a Reply