The Catholic Church is investigating the web sale of purported relics of soon-to-be-saint Carlo Acutis, the primary millennial to be canonized.
The Church has enlisted Italian police to crack down on the illicit trade, highlighting the stress between the traditional practice of venerating relics and the fashionable marketplace of the web.
Since the early days of Christianity, relics – typically fragments of a saint’s body or clothing authenticated by the Church – have played a big role in Catholic devotion.
Believers often pray for intercession through these relics, that are traditionally housed in churches. However, Church law explicitly forbids their sale.
Acutis, who drew lots of of hundreds of pilgrims to his shrine even before his upcoming canonization, has turn out to be a focus for this illicit trade.
The increasing demand for relics related to the young saint has created a possibility for online vendors to take advantage of the faithful. The Church’s intervention underscores its commitment to protecting each the sanctity of relics and its followers from potential fraud.
“It’s not only despicable, but it surely’s also a sin,” said the Rev. Enzo Fortunato, who leads the Vatican’s World Children’s Day committee and has a tiny fragment of Acutis’ hair in a chapel by his office for veneration by visiting youth. “Every type of commerce over faith is a sin.”
An anonymous seller had put up for online auction some supposedly authenticated locks of Acutis’ hair that were fetching upward of two,000 euros ($2,200 US), in response to the Diocese of Assisi, before being taken down. Last month, Bishop Domenico Sorrentino asked authorities to confiscate the items and added that if fraudulent, the sale would constitute a “great offense to non secular belief.”
Acutis was precocious in developing and sharing his faith
Acutis died of leukemia in 2006, when he was only 15 but had already developed a precocious faith life centered on devotion to the Eucharist — which for Catholics holds the actual presence of Christ. Savvy with technology, he had created an internet exhibit about eucharistic miracles through the centuries.
He will formally be declared a saint at a Mass in front of the Vatican’s St. Peter’s Basilica on April 27. Over the past 12 months, about 1 million pilgrims have flocked to the central Italian town of Assisi, where his body — wearing sneakers, jeans, and a sweatshirt — lies in a shrine in a church dedicated to a key moment within the lifetime of medieval hometown saint, St. Francis.
Acutis’ body was exhumed in the course of the more-than-decade-long canonization process and treated so it may very well be preserved for public showing, including by removing certain organs. His face, which looks as if he were asleep, was reconstructed with a silicone mask, Sorrentino said.
Acutis’ heart has been preserved at a dedicated altar in one other Assisi church; it’ll be taken to Rome for the canonization Mass.
“The relics are little, little fragments of the body, to say that that body is blessed, and it explains to us the closeness of God,” Sorrentino said.
Handling of relics is a painstaking task for the church
There are different “classes” of relics — an important are major body parts, similar to the guts. Sorrentino gave Acutis’ pericardium — the membrane enclosing the guts — to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2022 at some stage in its multi-year Eucharistic Revival.
The bishop in control of the saint’s body works with requests from other bishops world wide to offer or lend relics — all the time at no cost — to be exhibited for veneration at parishes and other churches.
“We give this to communities, to parishes, to priests using the relics for the cult of their parish,” Sorrentino said. “It’s not something magic. It’s not something that works mechanically, it really works through faith.”
The practice of gathering relics dates to the earliest days of the church, when many faithful Christians died as martyrs in religious persecutions. Witnesses to the killings would collect blood or fragments of clothing to memorialize their sacrifice and to wish for the saints’ intercession, Fortunato said.
In Acutis’ case, the primary miracle in his canonization process was the healing of a boy in Brazil after a prayer service invoking his intercession with the presence of a relic, he added.
For clergy and pilgrims who’ve been visiting Acutis’ shrine in Assisi this week, the relics take second place to the instance of religion and the facility of assisting with prayer that saints provide.
“I’d never buy one,” said Amelia Simone, an 18-year-old from Chicago who has been studying in Rome and credits Acutis for help smoothing out tricky visa paperwork. “I believe the intercession aspect may be very cool, but I don’t think I’d ever need to own a first-class relic. It just would feel a bit weird to me.”
Two clergy leading a Holy Year pilgrimage to Italy from the Diocese of Greensburg, Pennsylvania, said it was “an amazing tragedy” that online relic sales were happening.
“We proceed to wish for people’s conversion,” said the Rev. Christopher Pujol.
Bishop Larry Kulick added that relics “are very reverent and really solemn for us as Catholics. And they will not be only inspirational for us, but they’re really … opportunities to assist us to wish.”
“And so it’s unlucky that such a thing would occur, because that’s really a misuse of the relics and truly a disrespect to him and to his memory,” he added.
Some mixed views on this sainthood process
Already, the unusual devotion and a spotlight that Acutis’ canonization process has generated has been met with some skepticism. In lots of of social media comments to a recent Associated Press article in regards to the phenomenon, some called his sainthood a marketing ploy by the church to lure more young people back into the pews.
Many others — and people making pilgrimage to Assisi — praised Acutis for his devotion and were glad he’s turn out to be a task model for members of his generation.
“It’s a joy for me to have encountered Carlo Acutis’ body, and particularly to ask for his intercession for the transformation and the conversion of many youth,” said Juana de Dios Euceda, a missionary nun from Honduras.
