0
0
On 10 October 2020, in the unique setting of the upper basilica of St. Francis in Assisi, Carlo Acutis is declared blessed. Cardinal Agostino Vallini, Legato, pontifical for the basilicas of St. Francis and St. Mary of the Angels, represents the Pope. Thousands of people are expected, welcomed with all the precautions imposed by the pandemic. There would have been many more, out of this time of crisis. For this reason too, in order to distribute the influx of the faithful, it was chosen to make visible the body of Carlo, buried at the sanctuary of the Stripping, until the next 17th.
Intense days, in which thousands of visitors are passing through the city of Poverello, and the image of this boy, recomposed with so much art and love to appear to the “natural”, is at the center of a truly surprising veneration.
Why Assisi? What is Carlo’s relationship with St. Francis? Carlo was born in London in 1991, to a couple living in Milan, Andrea and Antonia Salzano. the family returned within a few days on the capital of Lombardy. Carlo will be a young “Milanese”. The same cause of beatification was introduced by the Ambrosian archdiocese, until the current phase, passed to the diocese of Assisi. In fact, already in Carlo’s life, the family’s attention had shifted progressively to Assisi. Carlo, at least during the holidays, came to breathe the spiritual atmosphere of the city of Francis. Without becoming Franciscan, Francis’ message and testimony marked him deeply. He felt particularly happy in this city. Indeed, he had to express to his mother the desire to be buried here, at his death, certainly not imagining that it would come so soon.
His is a truly “essential” holiness. Simple to tell. He was, all the way, a boy of our time. Between school and family, between travel and sports, between music and computer science. But with a fundamental secret, presiding over his whole human and Christian journey: love for Jesus in the Eucharist. To understand it, you have to start from here.
He had received his first communion in 1998, a little earlier than his peers. That match marked him forever. Mass became his daily rendezvous. He was enraptured by the mystery of Christ’s royal presence in the Eucharist. He loved to say, “The Eucharist is my highway to heaven”.
In this, the Eucharistic perspective of the saint of Assisi echoed, but in the opposite direction. Francis loved to contemplate the “descent” of Jesus, from the royal seat of Heaven, to the altar in the hands of the priest. Carlo loved the ascending perspective: with the Eucharist he immediately ascended to heaven. “Highway” special, without speed limits and without obstacles, where love can run freely and swiftly towards the Beloved.
Spirituality of stripping
Carlo was greedy for infinity. He loved life with all its beauties. In Assisi, he could be seen walking his dogs, or surprised him by swimming at the municipal pool. Life was beautiful even in its most ordinary expressions. But this beauty was authentic and full, because hinged on God. After all, it was the same discovery that eight hundred years earlier had made Francis, the rich son of Peter of Bernardone, the “king of the holidays”, the “dreamer” of adventures, until he had discovered that Christ is the true treasure of life. Carlo, in his simplicity as a teenager, stands in the footsteps of the great saint. He says it with a tweeting summary: tweet “Not me, but God”.
It is the spirituality of “stripping” that, in some way, brings him closer to Francis in the sanctuary that recalls precisely the prophetic gesture with which the Saint had stripped down to nudity to say that Christ was now his “everything”.
The attraction that Carlo is exerting worldwide has something mysterious. But what has made him “extraordinary”? In his path of growth he had soon shown his spiritual inclination, but he was not immune to flaws. One of her teachers, during the beatification trial, recalled that she had taken some “notes” at school for some reprehensible behavior. A way of saying that you are not born saints, but you become one.
Apostolate through the internet
Standing in front of Jesus for a long time was the laboratory in which his holiness grew. Accompanied certainly by Mary, for whom he had a special devotion, expressed above all in the recitation of the Rosary. These two great loves – Jesus the Eucharist and the Holy Virgin – pushed him onto the apostolate’s path. And because he had special talent for the internet, the ways of his apostolate were those of the “network”.
The exhibition of Eucharistic miracles and that of Marian apparitions, the latter conceived before it could complete it, were two instruments that continue to see him walk the streets of the world. It is clear why so many young people are attracted by his smile, his sunny face, his confidence. They really feel he is one of them, but a “special” one.
“We all are born original – many die photocopies”
He impresses the program of authenticity that he had given himself, with a consideration that makes everyone think, young and old: “We all are born original, many die photocopies”. An intuition that Pope Francis has relaunched for all the young people of the world in the exhortation Christus vivit, in which Carlo dedicates three paragraphs (see below), presenting him as a model of the use of the internet: a world in which one can get lost, but which can also be so useful to do good and build a more beautiful world. A “clean” world. A welcoming and fraternal world even for the poorest, to whom Carlo knew how to open his heart.
At his funeral, faces unknown to the family appeared, but which had been a bit of Carlo’s “hidden” family: poor people to whom he had not only done the classic “alms”, but with whom he had established a friendship. This too, after all, the consequence of his Eucharistic love: the Christ who gives himself in broken bread is the same one that gives us an appointment in the face of the poor.
His death was his last testimony. Ten days of severe leukemia. He, despite suffering, serene, was ready to give his life for the Church and for the Pope. The burial was in Milan, but shortly afterwards the transfer to Assisi occurred, where his reputation for holiness has been growing over the years.
The miraculous healing of a Brazilian child
That tomb attracted. On July 5, 2018, the Pope recognizes his virtues by decreeing their veneratibility. The “sign from heaven” came early, the healing of a Brazilian child from his intercession. Now his inscription is in the register of the Blesseds, with the hope that many, encountering the memory of Carlo and his mortal remains at the sanctuary of the Stripping, will see a flap of heaven reappear in themselves – beyond all the toils of life, a flapper in heaven.
Extract from Christus Vivit
Pope Francis’s words during the Angelus Reflection on 11 October 2020 were as follows:
Yesterday, in Assisi, Carlo Acutis, a 15-year-old youth enamoured of the Eucharist, was beatified. He did not ease into comfortable immobilism, but understood the needs of his time, because he saw the face of Christ in the weakest. His witness indicates to 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. A round of applause for the new young Blessed!
