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Denver Newsroom, Oct 10, 2020 / 03:36 am (CNA).-  

By the age of 18, Kim Zember was leading what she called a double life.

She had a boyfriend, she would attend Mass with her family every Sunday – and then go meet the woman she was secretly seeing at the time for drinks by the pool.

“Katy Perry sang that she kissed a girl and she liked it. I did too…and I liked it! What’s the big deal?” Zember writes in the introduction to her new personal-testimony-turned-book: “Restless Heart: My struggle with life and sexuality.”

So, what was the big deal?

Zember, a California girl born and raised Catholic, found that no matter how much she pursued relationships with women, she was never at peace. She recognized unhealthy patterns in her relationships. Many times, she was dating women who were already married – to men. At one point in her early 20s, she was the married one, cheating on her husband with another woman. For a long time, her relationships were mostly a secret.

“I knew it was wrong. Why else keep it a secret?” Zember, now 36, wrote. She said she felt “addicted” to women, and would enter a new relationship as soon as an old one ended. In a lot of ways, she said, she was frantically dating to avoid a deep-seated fear of being alone.

“We thirst for love. We thirst to be known. We thirst to be approved,” Zember told CNA. “We thirst for all these things, but that’s not the bad part because [God] allowed us to thirst for the thing. Where we go wrong is when we fulfill that desire outside of him.”

“When God says he’s enough, he means it,” she added. “And it’s not that he might be – it’s that he is. And see, I just never took him at his word.”

At least, she didn’t for many years, as she dated both men and women in her search for love and her true identity.

Because her relationships with women did not sit well with her, Zember sought out what she thought would be sound Christian advice, first from a Christian counselor, and then from two different priests in her life.

Every time, they were compassionate, Zember said, but they were not truthful. They told Zember that her relationships with women were fine, and that the Church needed to “catch up with the times.”

“It was out of compassion,” Zember said. “But compassion without the truth of God is false compassion.”

And it was never enough to put Zember at peace.

“I believe that I had this incorruptible seed that God has given me, that he did not let me accept lies as truth,” she said.

“For me, when lies were told, even if they were told out of compassion, God did not allow that to be settled as true,” she said. “I’m very thankful – though it was frustrating (at the time) and though a big part of me desired to believe it.”

At one point, Zember was secretly dating a woman named Katie, and it was during this relationship that Zember’s attraction to women accidentally became public. A friend caught a moment of physical affection between Katie and Kim, and within a few days, Kim received a call from her brother.

“Kim, what’s going on with you and that girl, Katie?” he asked.

Zember told her brother everything, as well as her parents. Though they all treated her with compassion, she said, none of them were compromising about the truth of Christ with her.

“I never questioned my parents’ love for me,” she said. “I did question whether or not they loved what I was doing.”

After she was “caught” with Katie, Zember tried being more open and public about her relationships. Her friends and family knew that she dated women, and she would hold hands or kiss the women she was dating in public.

She was told by several people that living openly and being accepting would be enough to put her mind at ease and her heart at peace.

But it still never felt right, and every time someone asked her point-blank if she was “gay,” Zember would balk at the label.

“For me, I couldn’t explain then why I didn’t identify as gay, except for the fact that I knew that wasn’t my identity,” she said.

“I didn’t know what my identity was. I just knew it wasn’t gay….It was like, well, I understand that I’m doing this, that this is a lifestyle I am living. But I just couldn’t agree that that made me who I was,” she added.

There were moments of clarity with God for Zember as she wrestled with her sexuality and identity. One of those moments was when, as a young and successful realtor in California, she prayed for God to reveal her heart to herself. In that prayer, God brought back a childhood desire of hers, which was to serve the poor in Africa – a desire that had come after hearing a talk from a missionary priest.

That prayer was the beginning of what is now Unforgotten Faces, a non-profit founded by Zember that helps single mothers and their children in Ethiopia. The ministry was the fruit of many trips and periods of living in Ethiopia, during which Zember said God was showing her “that the world does not revolve around myself.”

“It was so drastic, the level of need that human beings were in, and to get to see it firsthand…for me, I believe it was a way that God got into my heart to break it or to begin to break it, because he’s still breaking off that selfishness,” she said. 

“It’s really hard to see others when you can’t see past yourself. I believe the Lord in his graciousness used Ethiopia to open my eyes and open my heart to others and to begin to entertain the idea of living a life of service to others instead of a life for self,” she said.

It would still take many cycles of relationships with women, moments of clarity with God, pursuing mission work in Ethiopia, and then back to dating women in California, until October 17, 2014, which is the day Zember celebrates as the day she truly surrendered her life to God.

“I surrender. I surrender the thing I haven’t given You. I surrender relationships to you, God,” she prayed.

She told God that she would not date anyone – man or woman – for an entire year, so that she could focus on her relationship with him. That day, she attended a prayer meeting with a friend, which left her feeling overwhelmingly at peace, “indescribably happy,” with a “hunger for God” and everything that he wanted for her life.

Zember’s life changed drastically that day. She turned fervently to her mission work, she sent messages apologizing to all the people she had hurt throughout her life. Her taste in music and movies changed, and she felt a true sense of freedom.

That day was real, Zember wrote, and the year of no dating and pursuing only God was one of the most spiritually fruitful in her life so far.

But that doesn’t mean she was perfect from that day forward, she noted. In the following chapters of the book, Zember recalled how some well-intentioned relationships turned sour, and how she continually needed – and still needs –  to keep turning back to the Lord.

“I speak on a lot of Protestant platforms and, I get asked the question all the time – ‘When were you saved?’” Zember said.

She said she likes to respond: “‘Well, let’s be real. It was at the cold waters of baptism when I was an infant.’ That always strikes up a conversation.”

Zember said she included these moments of stumbling in her book even after her surrender to God because conversion is not a “one and done” process.

“There’s a cooperation of grace. His grace, I cannot earn. His grace, I do not deserve, but I can receive it and I can ask him to help me to work with it,” she said.

“Through this process of many different encounters I’ve had with the Lord daily, I believe he’s sanctifying me just as he is everybody else from day to day. It’s not a one hit. He’s not a magician. It’s a relationship. My relationship with him is constantly growing, especially the more I seek him.”

Zember never intended to publicly share her testimony about her relationship with God and her same-sex attractions.

“I actually resisted it,” she said.

While accompanying a friend doing ministry at a women’s prison, Zember felt God calling her to speak about homosexuality, and she told him: “That ain’t me, God. I suggest you whisper that to someone else.”

But the calling did not go away, and Zember finally gave in – and volunteered to share her testimony at the women’s prison.

“I realized what was holding me back was myself, and what will people think of me? What about my reputation, or my image, or self-love?” she said.

“And so, I thought, ‘Okay, well, you know what? It can’t hurt. Well, it could hurt actually,’” she said, noting that she was afraid she might get “beat up” for speaking about such a controversial topic at a prison.

“But I thought, I’ll try it this one time, because apparently there’s a big need, and we’ll see what happens.”

To her surprise, nobody left the room during her testimony. Many were crying, and by the end the women stood up and applauded. Many wanted to talk one-on-one afterwards.

After that talk, Zember shared her testimony more freely, and soon enough she founded her second ministry, Overcome, for people who also want to live in Christ’s truth about homosexuality.

The ministry started as more of a landing page for all of the “overwhelming” responses she was getting to sharing her testimony, Zember said.

“But all positive. All people seeking hope,” she said. “And sharing that they found hope in what I shared, and that they desire the same thing or similar in their life…it was a flood of people reaching out from all over the world.”

Like with her other ministry in Ethiopia, Zember said she started Overcome ultimately because of an invitation from God.

“So again, God invited me to say, ‘Hey, can you stop looking at yourself and see the need that I have before you?’ He doesn’t need me, but he does say that the harvest is ripe and the laborers are few. And so I was like, ‘Okay, well then, let’s do this.’”

It was out of this same kind of invitation that Zember wrote her testimony in “Restless Heart.” And her message, she said, is a simple one.

“I pray that people can see that God is good, that he loves us, and that he is for us and not against us. And every one of his ways, that have been preserved in Scripture, that have been preserved by the Catholic Church, are for our good and for the glory of God.”

 

[…]

Denver Newsroom, Oct 9, 2020 / 05:40 pm (CNA).- The Archdiocese of New Orleans defended on Friday its handling of a priest who sent text messages to at least one high school student, in violation of archdiocesan policy. An attorney representing the student said the priest’s texts were grooming behavior, and the archdiocesan response put students at risk.

“This man preyed on kids who were at risk, sons who were in need of strong, strong male figures in their lives, and that’s what he gave them,” attorney Bill Arata told CNA Oct. 9, in reference to Fr. Pat Wattingy, who was until July chaplain at John Paul II High School in Slidell, Louisiana.

Wattingy was removed from ministry Oct. 1, after he admitted that in 2013 he sexually abused a minor, the same year he was transferred from ministry at Archbishop Rummel High School outside New Orleans.

Until July, Wattingy was chaplain of John Paul II High School in Slidell, Louisiana.

Arata told CNA that in February 2020, he presented the archdiocese with 50 pages of text messages between Wattingy and students, which he claims were part of a pattern of grooming.

Arata said the texts repeatedly asked a male student when he would turn 18, and that both texts and calls came at inappropriate hours.

“So let me just be blunt. The calls came at midnight, one-o-clock in the morning. If that’s all you knew about a priest communicating with a child, a minor, we could stop there, right?”

“But we don’t. Let’s take it to the next level. No fewer— and I’m not talking about one child, I’m talking about several— but let’s just use a one-child situation. Six, seven times, he wanted to know when the child would turn 18. He brought him special lunches, he invited him to his house in Georgia, he’s sending pictures at Christmas from the house in Georgia,” Arata said.

“Did he mean with his mom? His dad? Maybe his older brother? No, none of those texts went to anybody but the child,” the attorney claimed.

The archdiocese claims that the texts did not contain “sexual references or innuendo” but still violated the archdiocesan policies about communication with youth.

The priest was reportedly admonished by archdiocesan officials to stop sending texts and permitted to remain in ministry at the school. He remained chaplain until he sent additional texts to at least one student and was reportedly sent by the archdiocese for a psychological evaluation.

Arata claims that an archdiocesan attorney acknowledged to him that the texts were grooming behavior, and that the priest began texting just six weeks or so after he was told to stop contacting children.

CNA requested copies of text messages to review, but Arata said his clients had not given him permission to release them to the media.

The school’s principal, Douglas Triche, wrote to parents this week saying that he had not been notified about the inappropriate texts sent by Wattingy. But Arata raised objections to Triche’s claims.

Triche told parents, Arata said, “that he may have heard rumors, but he did not know. Who’d he hear the rumors from? When did he hear the rumors? Why didn’t he act when he heard them? Those are questions I would automatically ask.”

The principal could not be reached by CNA for comment.

Arata told CNA that he believes the archdiocese had reason to be suspicious of Wattingy when the text messages were initially reported.

“The archdiocese has moved him seven times in 26 years. The average contract is five years, right? Help me understand, that’s 3.7 years per place. Why’d you move him? And then they want us to believe that the first time they ever heard of an issue at Rummel was on Thursday, October 1, 2020?” Wattingy asked.

The lawyer also said that he supplied additional text messages from the priest to students after the initial batch in February, and that he was told it was being handled. Then in June, he says he was told the priest was being sent for a psychological evaluation.

The lawyer said that if the text messages to students did not represent a problem, the archdiocese would have had no reason to send the priest for an evaluation. He said sending the priest for an evaluation confirms that the archdiocese knew the texts were not appropriate.

In a statement on Friday, in which New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond addressed the situations of Wattingy and Fr. Travis Clark, a New Orleans priest arrested for filming pornographic videos on an altar, Aymond said that Wattingy would never again serve in public ministry.

Aymond said of the 2013 abuse, “there was no prior accusation and we knew nothing about the abuse before Oct. 1.”

The archbishop repeated his claim that “the texts did not indicate abuse and there was no allegation of sexual abuse. I am sorry for the pain that this has caused.”

After the archbishop released his statement, CNA asked the archdiocese who at the archdiocese had evaluated the texts, and whether the archdiocese considered them to constitute grooming behavior.

“We stand by the assertion that they are not sexual in nature and did not indicate abuse but were a violation of our Technology Policy,” a spokesperson for the archdiocese told CNA.

Arata, whose child is a student at John Paul II High School, told CNA that he and his clients are weighing options regarding the possibility of litigation.

Jonah McKeown contributed to this report.

[…]

CNA Staff, Oct 9, 2020 / 04:35 pm (CNA).-  

The Archbishop of New Orleans said Friday that a priest’s filming of a pornographic videotape atop a church’s altar was demonic, and that the priest will never again serve in Catholic minist… […]

CNA Staff, Oct 9, 2020 / 03:55 pm (CNA).- A historical cathedral in Nagorno-Karabakh was attacked this week, and Armenia is accusing Azerbaijan of carrying out the attack.

Holy Savior Cathedral in Shusha, Nagorno-Karabakh – a disputed territory – was shelled on October 8 amid increasing violence between the two countries.

Artsrun Hovhannisyan, spokesman for Armenia’s defense ministry, blamed “enemy Azerbaijan” for the attack, the BBC said.

According to reports, a section of the cathedral’s roof was destroyed in the attack, while limestone walls were damaged and pews knocked over.

One local resident told AFP news agency that “it is a very important cathedral for Armenians.” He noted that the city of Shusha contains no military operations and questioned the reason for the attack.

Holy Savior Cathedral was consecrated in 1888 and later damaged in 1920 in the Shusa massacre of Armenians by Azerbaijanis. During the Nagorno-Karabakh War, Azerbaijan used the cathedral as a missile armory.

The cathedral was restored after the war and reconsecrated in 1998. The building is 35 meters high, making it one of the largest Armenian churches in the world, and an important symbol for the Armenian people.

Nagorno-Karabakh is an area internationally recognized as belonging to Azerbaijan, a predominately Muslim country, but controlled by ethnic Armenians, who mostly belong to the Armenian Apostolic Church, one of six churches belonging to the Oriental Orthodox communion.

The dispute over the territory has been ongoing since the collapse of the Soviet Union, with a war breaking out from 1988 to 1994.

Fighting has reignited in recent months, with Turkey declaring support for Azerbaijan and other states calling for a diplomatic resolution.

Since the fighting picked up on September 27, thousands of people have been displaced from their homes and over 300 people have died, the BBC reported.

 

[…]

CNA Staff, Oct 9, 2020 / 03:19 pm (CNA).- As Hurricane Delta approaches Louisiana, two southern Catholic Charities are preparing for the impact of another hurricane landfall this season.

Tropical storm level winds hit Texas and southwestern Louisiana … […]

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 9, 2020 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- A federal court ruled on Friday that Florida State University (FSU) must pay the Catholic former leader of the student senate who was removed in June for comments he made about Church teaching a… […]

CNA Staff, Oct 9, 2020 / 12:01 pm (CNA).- The US Supreme Court on Thursday refused to reverse a lower court’s order preventing the FDA from requiring in-person dispensation of the abortion pill during the coronavirus pandemic.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote a dissent, in which he was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, which focused on “the inconsistency in the Court’s rulings on COVID–19-related public safety measures,” especially regarding First Amendment rights.

The court voted 6-2 Oct. 8 to postpone considering the Trump administration’s appeal that seeks a stay of an injunction that prevents the FDA from enforcing its regulation of mifepristone, the first of the two drugs taken in a medical abortion.

In July, Judge Theodore Chuang of the US District Court for the District of Maryland ruled that the FDA listing of the abortion pill regimen alongside higher-risk procedures and drugs posed an undue burden on women seeking abortions during the pandemic, because it required them to travel to a medical facility to obtain mifepristone. Chuang, and a federal circuit court which upheld his ruling in August, said that women should be able to take mifepristone without a visit to a doctor’s office.

The Supreme Court noted that the FDA “argues that, at a minimum, the injunction is overly broad in scope, given that it applies nationwide and for an indefinite duration regardless of the improving conditions in any individual State. Without indicating this Court’s views on the merits of the District Court’s order or injunction, a more comprehensive record would aid this Court’s review.”

Because of this, the court said the district court should “promptly consider a motion by the Government to dissolve, modify, or stay the injunction, including on the ground that relevant circumstances have changed,” giving it 40 days to rule after having received the government motion.

Alito wrote in his dissent that “there is no legally sound reason” for the court’s refusal to rule on the injunction.

“For all practical purposes, there is little difference between what the Court has done and an express denial of the Government’s application. In both situations, the FDA rule may not be enforced, and in both situations, the Government is able to move the District Court to modify the injunction based on changed circumstances.”

“There is, however, one difference (but not a legally significant one) between what the Court has done and the express denial of the Government’s application. Expressly denying a stay would highlight the inconsistency in the Court’s rulings on COVID–19-related public safety measures,” he noted.

“In response to the pandemic, state and local officials have imposed unprecedented rest rictions on personal liberty, including severe limitations on First Amendment rights. Officials have drastically limited speech, banning or restricting public speeches, lectures, meetings, and rallies. The free exercise of religion also has suffered previously unimaginable restraints, and this Court has stood by while that has occurred.”

He pointed to the court’s decisions in May and July upholding coronavirus limitations on religious services in California and Nevada, noting that “the Court deferred to the judgment of the Governor of Nevada that attendance at worship services presented a greater threat to public health than engaging in the diversions offered by the State’s casinos. The possibility that this dubious conclusion might have been based less on science than on the influence of the State’s powerful gaming industry and its employees was not enough to move the Court. Near-total deference was the rule of the day.”

“In the present case, however, the District Court took a strikingly different approach. While COVID–19 has provided the ground for restrictions on First Amendment rights, the District Court saw the pandemic as a ground for expanding the abortion right recognized in Roe v. Wade.”

Alito noted that the FDA adopted the regulation at issue in 2000, it has been enforced over the course of four administrations, and the agency “evidently decided that the mifepristone requirement should remain in force” during the pandemic.

“Nevertheless, a District Court Judge in Maryland took it upon himself to overrule the FDA on a question of drug safety. Disregarding THE CHIEF JUSTICE’s admonition against judicial second-guessing of officials with public health responsibilities, the judge concluded that requiring women seeking a medication abortion to pick up mifepristone in person during the COVID–19 pandemic constitutes an ‘undue burden’ on the abortion right, and he therefore issued a nationwide injunction against enforcement of the FDA’s requirement. The judge apparently was not troubled by the fact that those responsible for public health in Maryland thought it safe for women (and men) to leave the house and engage in numerous activities that present at least as much risk as visiting a clinic—such as indoor restaurant dining, visiting hair salons and barber shops, all sorts of retail establishments, gyms and other indoor exercise facilities, nail salons, youth sports events, and, of course, the State’s casinos.”

Alito wrote that “Under the approach recently taken by the Court in cases involving restrictions on First Amendment rights, the proper disposition of the Government’s stay application should be clear: grant. But the Court is not willing to do that. Nor is it willing to deny the application. I see no reason for refusing to rule.”

He concluded that the case “presents important issues that richly merit review. The District Court’s decision, if reviewed, is likely to be reversed. And if the FDA is right in its assessment of mifepristone, non-enforcement of the requirement risks irreparable harm. A stay is amply warranted.”

[…]

CNA Staff, Oct 9, 2020 / 11:10 am (CNA).- A priest in the Archdiocese of New Orleans has been arrested along with two women and charged with obscenity after he was discovered filming a pornographic video on a parish church altar.

Fr. Travis Clark, 37, the pastor of Sts. Peter and Paul in Pearl River, Louisiana, was arrested together with Mindy Dixon, 41, and Melissa Cheng, 23, on September 30. 

A local resident told police they noticed the lights were on in the parish church, and upon looking in the windows, saw the three engaged in sexual activity on the  altar. According to reports, the altar of the church had been outfitted with stage lighting.

The Archdiocese of New Orleans announced the following day, Oct. 1, that Clark had been arrested and removed from ministry. Initially, no details were given for the cause of his removal, other than to confirm that he was not accused of any offences related to abuse of minors. 

Details were not revealed until Oct. 8, when public records were released.

Dixon is a pornagraphic performer and “dominatrix.” According to Nola.com, she had posted on her social media the day before her arrest that she was headed to New Orleans to “defile a house of God” alongside another “dominatrix,” presumably Cheng. 

Police believe the sexual encounter to have been consensual, and have not filed charges related to sexual assault. The obscenity charge stemmed from the fact that the sex act was visible from a window.

Clark is expected to face canonical sanctions for violations of clerical continence, and for the profanation of an altar, which is constituted a crime in canon 1376 of the Code of Canon Law, which provides that “a person who profanes a movable or immovable sacred object is to be punished with a just penalty.”

Clark was ordained a priest in 2013, and became the pastor of Sts. Peter and Paul in 2019. He had recently been named the chaplain of Pope John Paul II High School in Slidell, Louisiana, replacing another priest who resigned this summer. That priest, Fr. Paul Wattingly, was also suspended from public ministry Oct 1, after he admitted to abusing a minor in 2013.

“Both of these situations are very troubling to me. When a priest does not live out his vocation faithfully he suffers consequences and I must notify the parishioners, school families, and public in general,” said Archbishop Gregory Aymond of New Orleans in an Oct. 1 statement announcing the suspensions. 

“Please pray for all those affected, especially the parishioners of the parishes and school communities where they have served,” he added. 

Aymond has since performed a penitential liturgy of atonement and re-consecration of the altar at Sts. Peter and Paul church following the act of profanation.

As news of the story spread Friday, one priest on Twitter urged Catholics to pray prayers of reparation, “consoling the heart of Jesus.”

 

I just heard about a priest who did something truly diabolical recently. I won’t share the details because it’s very upsetting. But please, PLEASE, spend some time in prayer today consoling the heart of Jesus in reparation for this sin, and all sins. You can pray this chaplet. pic.twitter.com/G6KhX9xmXw

— Fr. Tom Bombadil, Ring Wraith? (@calix517) October 9, 2020

 

Clark, Dixon, and Cheng have all been released on bail.

 

[…]

Washington D.C., Oct 9, 2020 / 04:00 am (CNA).-  

Servant of God Carlo Acutis is set to be beatified on Saturday, and will become the first member of the millennial generation to become officially known as a “blessed.”

Interest in the life of Carlo Acutis has been intense in the weeks leading up to his beatification. And while research shows that a growing number of millennials and Gen Z Americans do not practice any religious faith, CNA spoke with some Catholic contemporaries of Acutis, who said the video-game playing Italian makes them want to grow closer to God.

Born on May 3, 1991, Carlo Acutis died at the age of 15 on Oct. 12, 2006 after suffering from leukemia.

During his life, he made a website dedicated to Eucharistic miracles, and maintained a deep devotion to the Eucharist until his death. He also loved PlayStation, which is probably a first for anyone canonized or beatified.

Acutis serves as an example for how millennials and Gen Z should live their lives, Cecilia Cicone, a 25-year-old from Delaware, told CNA.

“Carlo puts flesh on what a saint who plays video games and goes on the internet looks like. He challenges me to examine my conscience and say, ‘Ok, I’m called to be a saint who uses the internet too. Am I using it to make God’s love known?’”

Acutis, she said, is a concrete example of “what holiness looks like in the 21st century.”

“We see that holiness can involve awkward middle school phases with popped collars and video games,” she said.

“With the beatification of Carlo Acutis, for the first time I experience the peace and joy of recognizing that I, too, can be a saint of the 21st century. It’s not a hypothetical anymore.”

Fr. John LoCoco, a priest of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, is about six months younger than Acutis. And when he first heard about Acutis in 2006, he said he was “wholly unimpressed by his witness at first.”

“I never cared much for computers or video games, so it never made him ‘familiar.’ He was just a kid who blogged about the Eucharist,” LoCoco told CNA.

Gradually, however, LoCoco’s views on Acutis began to change, and now he thinks that Acutis “will be a stalwart saint in the modern age.”

“I think that what I have come to love is what seems to be the very gentle nature of Carlo,” LoCoco said. “His care for those who are picked on in school, his care for those whose parents were divorcing; Carlo seems so emotionally invested in the lives of people.”

LoCoco told CNA that he now finds the “profoundly quiet, honest sense that he had of God’s presence in all things” to be “remarkable.”

Maria Roberts, a 26-year-old computer programmer, is excited that her profession is about to gain its own patron saint, and she thinks that Acutis is a good example for how Catholics should be using the internet. 

“It is important for us as Catholics to think about how technology can be used for good and for evangelization, and not as a way to take advantage of others or demoralize young people,” she said.

“There is so much good to be done and so much suffering nowadays- young people should know that their talents can be used for God’s glory in many ways through our technological advances.”

Acutis’ age has been a sort of a spiritual wake-up call for some Catholics.

“The fact that we were alive at the same time and are so close in age seems to highlight even more the gap between our ‘levels’ of holiness,” Taylor Hyatt, a 28-year-old from Canada, told CNA. She was born the same year as Acutis.

“That said, I really appreciate his deep love for the Eucharist and interest in the Internet. We shared those interests, back when I was his age and up to now,” she said. Hyatt also admired Acutis’ interest in disability rights, a cause she is also involved with.

Fr. Paul Edmonstone, a recently-ordained priest in Ontario, was more blunt in his assessment of his life to Acutis’.

“For me personally, knowing how holy Blessed Carlo was makes me feel like a piece of crap,” he said. “I was born the same year as him and as a teenager wasn’t particularly saintly.”

“But I talked about him to our young adults group last week and showed them the picture of his tomb and more than a few people commented on the fact that he was wearing normal clothes, and that he played video games and was good with computers,” said Edmonstone.

“I have tried to use Pier Giorgio as an example young people can relate to but perhaps Blessed Carlo might be better these days given how contemporary he is.”

It is Acutis’ “normalcy” that makes him so interesting, some Catholics told CNA.

Acutis “is someone we can look at and quite literally picture ourselves,” Alex Trevino, a 30-year-old from Dallas, told CNA. “He’s buried in the clothes that I wore as a teenager.”

Trevino said that Acutis’ beautification shows young people “that you don’t need to be a priest, a bishop, or even a pope to be holy.”

“We need to see as a Church that sainthood, heaven, and eternal life with God is real and attainable,” he added. 

Ani, a 24-year-old from Texas, agreed. She described Acutis as “just a regular dude who grew up Catholic we all do, got sick like so many people do, and built a website to post about his specific interests like we do.”

“We talk about everyday sanctity a lot in Schoenstatt, the concept of doing things extraordinarily well,” Ani said to CNA. “I feel like Carlo’s maybe the first saint I’ve seen that’s had an actually normal, human, attainable way to do that.”

Unlike other saints who died young, such as St. Kateri, St. Therese, or St. Maria Goretti, Acutis had “no supernatural influence at any point,” said Ani.

“No visions, no tilma, no stigmata. Just a dude and his computer and his love of God. That stuff’s cool,” she said. 

 

[…]

Washington D.C., Oct 8, 2020 / 02:19 pm (CNA).- Members of Congress are supporting a Washington, D.C., Baptist church in its court case against the city’s enforcement of its COVID restrictions on outdoor religious services. 

Capitol Hill Ba… […]