First-class relic of Blessed Carlo Acutis to visit Tasmania
By Catherine Sheehan
A first-class relic of Blessed Carlo Acutis, an Italian teenager soon to be canonised, will be visiting Tasmania from 20 July to 1 September, along with an international exhibition he designed featuring 158 Eucharistic miracles from around the world.
The relic, a strand of Carlo’s hair, and the exhibition, will visit parishes and schools across the whole of Tasmania, including Hobart. There will be opportunities to venerate the relic and visit the exhibition at each location around the state.
Carlo who died from leukemia at age 15 is set to become the first millennial saint after the Vatican recently announced that his cause for canonisation had been approved. Earlier this year the Pope approved a second miracle attributed to Carlo’s intercession.
The ‘Eucharistic Miracles of the World’ exhibition was designed by Carlo and features Eucharist miracles from different countries that have been approved by the Church. The exhibition has already visited over 3,000 parishes in Italy, the US, and Canada.
Kate Hobbs, a parishioner from Queensland, obtained the first-class relic of Blessed Carlo in 2022 and she and her husband Kieran have been taking it on tour around the country. The relic and exhibition have just finished touring schools and parishes in Sydney.
Kate said interest in the relic and the exhibition has been increasing rapidly since the announcement of Carlo’s canonisation.
“Now it’s becoming this rush, which is wonderful,” she said. “I think God has raised a really big saint here.”
Kate said she had witnessed people become emotional when they interact with Blessed Carlo’s relic and that young children are “really drawn” to it.
“I think it’s the hope from seeing a young person who lived an every day life become a saint,” she said.
“He’s like a St Therese. He’s moving so quickly around the world. He’s been canonised quicker than St Therese. And I just think he’ll have that impact.”
Who is Blessed Carlo Acutis?
Born in 1991, Carlo Acutis grew up in Milan, Italy. From the time he received his First Holy Communion at age seven, he never missed attending daily Mass. He had a great devotion to praying before the Blessed Sacrament and prayed the Rosary daily.
His parents were not particularly devout and it was Carlo who persuaded them to attend daily Mass with him. According to the priest who promoted his causes for sainthood: “It was not his parents bringing the little boy to Mass, but it was he who managed to get himself to Mass and to convince others to receive Communion daily.”
Like many teenagers, he loved soccer and playing video games. He was considered a genius with computers by those who know him and he was interested in computer programming and website creation.
Carlo also took a keen interest in Eucharistic miracles and created a website dedicated to cataloguing the various miracles from around the world.
“The more often we receive the Eucharist, the more we will become like Jesus, so that on this earth we will have a foretaste of heaven,” Carlo wrote on his website.
After he was diagnosed with leukemia at age 15 he said, “I offer all the suffering I will have to suffer for the Lord, for the Pope, and the Church.”
He died on 12 October 2006 and was buried at Assisi, the home of St Francis of Assisi whom he loved. He was beatified in 2020.
For more information about the visit of the relic of Carlo Acutis and the Eucharistic miracles exhibition to the Emmanuel Centre in Launceston contact 0458 003 642.
Top image: CNS photo/courtesy Sainthood Cause of Carlo Acutis