The cause for the canonisation of Carlo Acutis, an Italian 15 year old who died in 2006, has been bolstered by the accounts of healings and conversion attributed to his intercession, but you could say he performed a mini-miracle last night – his mother packed out the church of Corpus Christi Maiden Lane on a weekday evening. And that was after a similar showing at Farm Street church on Wednesday and with an appearance tonight in Fulham and on Saturday in St Patrick’s, Soho.
It was an extraordinary spectacle: the people hoping to hear from the mother of the beatified boy spilled out onto the Covent Garden pavement. Inside there was an astonishingly diverse congregation of the devout and the curious – all nationalities, all ages – young men in bespoke suits, elderly Indian ladies, the well groomed and the shabby, and lots and lots of Irish travellers who brought any number of babies and children and fabulously dressed young women. The other miraculous aspect of the evening was that the Mass was punctuated by the sound which used to be commonplace in Catholic churches but is now heard dispiritingly little, that of a raucous baby. On the sanctuary there was a couple of Franciscan friars, a Knight of Malta, I think, a bishop; possibly an Oratorian. During Mrs Acutis’ talk there was a little boy at the foot of the altar steps swivelling round silently on his bottom; the Knight’s eyes popped at the sight.
The Mass was as lovely as you would expect from this church, which is a Eucharistic shrine for the diocese of Westminster – Carlo Acutis had a particular devotion to the Eucharist and one of his projects was an internet site for eucharistic miracles. During Benediction there was the exquisite eucharistic hymn composed for this church, Sweet Sacrament Divine.
But the draw was an ordinary woman with a pleasant, open, ruddy face, dressed in black with her long reddish hair in a ponytail and her handbag at her feet at the lectern – Antonia Salzano, mother of Carlo. She spoke with a strong Italian accent and was forthright and confident. It was an interesting exercise of a woman preaching in a traditionalist church.
She spoke of the Eucharist, to which her son had a special devotion, of the necessity of reading scripture (like her son, she said it is easy to read the Bible online), of the special quality of the rosary, of the benefits of daily Mass – “I promise you it will help you” – of the graces of reading the hours, or monastic offices, of the day. She quoted St Jerome on the necessity of reading scripture. She observed how influencers or celebrities attracted enormous crowds – “but where is the queue to visit Christ in the Eucharist?” Actually, that evening there was just the crowd she had in mind.
But she also spoke about her son Carlo. He had, she said, always a happy smile. “People would see him and think, does he know me? He’s smiling at me.” He would stand up to bullies in school – “because there is bullying” – and change the atmosphere. He was a catechist for five years. He would help migrants – “it is hard to find yourself away from your family, with no-one” and the homeless – “I think, she observed, “that you also have homeless people here” – and bring them blankets, or what they needed. He visited old people.
It was astonishing that this boy was only 15 when he died. And when he went into hospital with the leukaemia that killed him, he said to her “Mama, I will not leave here, but I will leave you signs”. And, she said, that’s what he did do.
Her voice did not break. There was little time for questions before the veneration of relics of Carlo at the altar rail (there was an astonishing throng of people to kiss the little monstrance-shaped reliquary), but the second came from a little Traveller girl: “What was your favourite thing about your son?”. Unblinking, she replied: “His generosity”.
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