Daniel Neves, a 13-year-old boy who painted pictures of the saints and the Blessed Virgin Mary to help to pay for his medical treatment, died May 18 after being hospitalized for almost two weeks with COVID-19.
At eight months Daniel was diagnosed with polycystic kidney disease, liver fibrosis, and spleen problems, and spent most of his life in the hospital. When he was five, his kidneys stopped functioning and he had to undergo hemodialysis every week. It was during that time that he learned to paint, and the sale of his paintings helped pay for his treatment.
The young boy mainly painted pictures of Catholic saints. On a waiting list to receive a kidney transplant, Daniel also created a picture of Our Lady of the Kidneys, so the Virgin would protect him during the operation and guide the doctors to perform the procedure successfully.
Daniel was born in Guanambi, Brazil, and lived with his mother, Cleide Neves, in an apartment in Salvador. Every three months he was taken to São Paulo for the necessary treatments.
An Instagram post announced the little boy died May 18 after being hospitalized for COVID-19 for 13 days.
“He fought bravely to the end. Thank you all for your care and support for him during all these years. You were part of his life, of his love for drawing … May God bless you all,” the post says.
The boy’s mother said that Daniel made her life more “special, sweet, fun and mischievous” and that the boy captivated people with his talent.
“Now you will make Heaven more colorful! We will miss you every day! Rest in peace,” she added.
The mother said the process of Daniel leaving this world was a special time and that God was merciful in allowing this time to say goodbye, even if it was painful.
“You will always be remembered and loved!” she concluded.
The Brazilian crowdfunding network voaa_vaquinhadorazoes, which ran a campaign to pay for Daniel’s medical expenses, said, “we can’t even express in words how sad and shaken we are,” adding that the amount raised by the campaign helped a lot with the boy’s treatment and pledged “to continue to help the family in this difficult time.”
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A detail of Timothy P. Schmalz’s fourth station: Jesus meets his mother. / Courtesy of Timothy P. Schmalz
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 18, 2022 / 04:00 am (CNA).
Catholic artist Timothy P. Schmalz sought to find and bring to life the most important subject matter an artist could ever express.
“I wanted to create a sculpture project that would be the heart of Christianity,” the Canadian sculptor said.
He settled on Christ’s crucifixion and death.
His new creation, once finished, will be a life-size set of the 14 Stations of the Cross — scenes depicting Christ’s journey from being condemned to death to his burial — placed right next to Disney World. The faithful will be able to encounter the 12-foot tall, 11-feet wide sculptures at the Basilica of Our Lady Queen of the Universe, in Orlando, Florida.
“I hope to rival Universal Studios, Walt Disney, and every other feature in Orlando by creating what has never been done before, and that is one of the biggest, most complex Stations of the Cross,” Schmalz said.
Schmalz is not new to sculpting. The experienced artist’s work can be found worldwide, from St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican to Washington, D.C. He is perhaps best known for his “Homeless Jesus” sculpture and the “Angels Unaware” statue.
His new Stations of the Cross, he hopes, will serve as a tool for evangelization and conversion for the roughly 50 million people that visit Disney each year.
“It’s right in the center of a place that desperately needs a spiritual Catholic oasis,” he said, adding that bringing the Stations of the Cross to Orlando is “bringing the Gospels [to] where the people are, in a sense.”
The stations — which combine mural painting and sculpture — will offer visitors “visual doorways into a Catholic-Christian experience,” he said.
So far, he has completed the first four stations: Jesus is condemned to death, Jesus carries his cross, Jesus falls for the first time, and Jesus meets his mother.
It will take another year, he says, before all 14 are done. On his YouTube channel, Schmalz walks viewers through the process of creating each station, from sketching them on paper to sculpting them in bronze.
Each scene, made of bronze, bursts with symbolism, movement, and emotion. The foreground shows Jesus’ passion. In the background, Schmalz plans to include every single parable found in the New Testament.
“When you see Jesus in the front, you’re going to see … a raw, hardcore scene from the passion,” he said. “But in the distance, you’re going to see the parables that he taught us. So it might be in the distance, you’ll see a camel trying to get through a little hole in the wall or the eye of the needle.”
While he works in his studio located in St. Jacobs, in Ontario, Canada, he listens to an audio recording of the New Testament, he said.
“Things are pulled out and things describe themselves as I create,” he explained, comparing his role to a “passenger” or “director.”
The stations are getting funded by various donors, he said, as he works on them. As they progress from one to 14, each station will become “more and more intense.”
“The passion now has become my passion,” he said.
He hopes that viewers will feel like they are a part of the stations.
“We know there’s a lot of kids going to Walt Disney in Orlando every year,” he said, giving one example. “I’m putting a lot of children within them so they can see themselves in the scene.”
The 53-year-old artist also sees himself in them.
“It’s fascinating because you really become a part of the subject matter as you’re working on it,” he said. “It evolves and it grows as you’re working on it, and it’s almost like it tells you what to do in a sense where I don’t necessarily know exactly how the piece will end up.”
He called the project mentally, spiritually, and physically taxing. He might dedicate one entire day to creating a little corner of one of the stations, he said, and another day just focusing on the face of Jesus.
But, he added, the work is worth it. These stations allow him, as an artist, to “get to the absolute essence of Christianity” in the hope that “it will be one of the greatest tools to convert and inspire Christianity.”
“I want [people] to come back from Orlando and, sure, talk about the rides, talk about Mickey Mouse. But I want them to say that the most exciting and most interesting and most moving thing with their vacation was this Stations of the Cross project,” he said. “And if I can do that with this piece of artwork, I have succeeded.”
At a time when many people are attacking Christianity and Christian symbols, Schmalz’s response is to create new, stronger symbols. “Sculptures that are bold, sculptures that celebrate and glorify Christ, but also encourage people to walk through that doorway and see Christ in focus,” he said.
“As they try to make us invisible, we have to sharpen,” he concluded. “And me, as an artist, that is my job, to sharpen our identity with these symbols and art.”
CNA Newsroom, Dec 9, 2022 / 14:00 pm (CNA).
On Dec. 8, the day the Church celebrates the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, thousands of women in different countries around the world gathered to pray the holy rosary for… […]
Santiago, Chile, Feb 6, 2020 / 06:18 pm (CNA).- Pope Francis on Wednesday appointed bishops to the dioceses of Osorno and San Bartolomé de Chillán, both of which had been left vacant in 2018 amid the sex abuse scandal of the Church in Chile.
On Feb. 5 Bishop Jorge Enrique Concha Cayuqueo, O.F.M., was named Bishop of Osorno, and Father Sergio Hernán Pérez de Arce Arriagada, SS.CC., was named Bishop of San Bartolomé de Chillán. Both had been serving as apostolic administrators of their new respective sees.
The chanceries of both Osorno and Chillán had been raided in September 2018 amid an investigation into sexual crimes against minors committed by members of the Church.
The Diocese of Osorno had been vacant since the June 2018 resignation of Bishop Juan de la Cruz Barros Madrid, who had been accused of covering up abuses of Father Fernando Karadima.
And the Diocese of San Bartolomé de Chillán fell vacant in September 2018 with the resignation of Bishop Carlos Eduardo Pellegrín Barrera, S.V.D., who had been accused of a sexual crime.
Six Chilean sees remain vacant.
Bishop Concha was born in 1958, and took solemn vows in the Order of Friars Minor in 1983, and was ordained a priest in 1986. He was appointed an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Santiago de Chile in 2015.
During Bishop Concha’s tenure as apostolic administrator of Osorno, he worked for reconciliation and renewal in the diocese and for improved relations with the faithful.
He said that he understood this job as “the search for peace, for unity, for rapprochement among all. I initiated dialogue, listened to a lot of people, visited all the communities, was always open for them to ask questions and made myself available to people. ”
Bishop Concha also reorganized pastoral and social ministries, optimizing economic and human resources.
Fr. Perez was born in 1963, and made perpetual vows with the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary in 1989; he was ordained a priest the following year.
Beside working in formation and counseling at schools and in youth ministry in various assignments, Fr. Pérez de Arce was the provincial superior of his congregation from 2005 to 2011. He served as president of the Conference of Religious Men and Women of Chile from 2011 to 2014. During the same period, he was a member of the National Council for the Prevention of Abuse and Accompaniment of Victims of the Chilean bishops’ conference.
The abuse committed by Karadima became the focus of attention in Chile after the 2015 appointment of Bishop Barros to Osorno. Barros had been accused of covering up Karadima’s abuses.
Pope Francis initially defended Barros, saying he had received no evidence of the bishop’s guilt, and called accusations against him “calumny” during a trip to Chile in January 2018. He later sent Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta to investigate the situation in Chile.
After receiving Scicluna’s report, the pope apologized, said that he had been seriously mistaken, and asked to meet the country’s bishops and some survivors in person.
In May 2018 he met with Chile’s bishops and asked all of them to offer their resignations, to be accepted or rejected later. He rebuked them for systemic cover-up of clerical abuse and called them to make deep changes.
Chilean officials have investigated 120 allegations of sexual abuse or cover-ups involving 167 Church officials or church workers, Reuters has reported.
A story of a wonderful young man, gravely ill, living far longer than most with all of his medical issues. Leaving a gallery of his intercessory art. R .I. P.
Prayers.
Yet another absent father. What a surprise. Not.
A story of a wonderful young man, gravely ill, living far longer than most with all of his medical issues. Leaving a gallery of his intercessory art. R .I. P.