JAMESTOWN — After the beatification of Carlo Acutis in October of 2020, Pope Francis praised the Italian teenager as providing “a witness to today’s young people that true happiness is found by putting God first.”
One year later, that witness has made its way from Milan to Jamestown, where the youth of St. Mark Church have organized a special exhibition on the newly beatified teen and his work of digitally cataloguing the “Miracles of the Eucharist.”
“It was really the kids that took the lead on this one,” says Jan Barron, a seventh- and eighth-grade religious education instructor at the parish serving as an adult assistant for the ongoing exhibit. “They found Carlo’s website online and came to me asking ‘How can we make this happen?’”
The presentation is part of an international exhibition which has been “touring” the world through digital file-sharing — appropriate for the Blessed Carlo, who has been referred to as the first “Cyber Apostle” of the Eucharist.
A self-described “computer geek” who began teaching himself basic programming at the age of nine, Acutis dedicated much of his brief lifespan to creating a “Virtual Museum” to record the wide variety of miracles associated with the Blessed Sacrament. His website, available for viewing in English at http://www.miracolieucaristici.org/, has remained active online even after his death from leukemia in 2006 at the age of 15.
Interest in the site increased dramatically after Carlo’s first miracle was approved by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, with high quality PDFs of his work being made available so that parishes around the world could bring his virtual museum into a physical space.
For Maryann Casey, one of the leaders of the St. Mark Youth Group, hosting the exhibit represents a chance to both evangelize and inspire.
“We’re a small parish in a small community, but we have a pretty active youth group,” says Casey. “We’d love to make it even more active though, and we’re hoping the example of Blessed Carlo will encourage more teens to get involved.”
Casey, 17, has been working with fellow Youth Group leader Tommy Chamberlain to bring the presentation to the parish since the summer.
“We first started planning it in June,” Casey recalls. “We hosted coffee hours to start raising funds for the posters and reaching out to adults in the parish to help us organize.”
The group’s fundraising efforts managed to bring in a total of $1,500 — an impressive result, though ultimately not enough for an exhibit of the scope which the teens had envisioned. Fortunately, however, a bit of diocesan networking made it possible for the parish to expand the scale of their display.
“I had heard that St. Pius V in Providence had a similar exhibit back in Lent,” says Barron.
“I called the rectory and they said that they had received their posters through Providence College, and that they’d be more than happy to share them with us as well.”
Another generous donation came from “The Word Among Us” magazine, which had published an article on Acutis in their June, 2021, edition. The magazine donated several boxes full of past issues to the parish to serve as programs for the exhibition.
In addition to the 28 posters borrowed from St. Pius V, the exhibition at St. Mark’s also includes posters taken from the Scientific Proof “wing” of Carlo’s virtual museum.
According to Casey, this represents one of the most important components of the exhibit.
“We live in a world where science is often considered to be in conflict with faith,” she says. “The information collected by Carlo helps us reaffirm our faith in the Eucharist on a rational level.”
The miracles described in this portion of the exhibit all occurred within the past three decades and were submitted to modern scientific examination prior to their approval by local ordinaries. All of them involve cases in which the transubstantiated Host inexplicably took on the physical appearance of flesh and blood, including examples from Sokółka, Poland, in 2008 and Tixtla, Mexico, in 2000.
Susan Hackman, another religious education instructor that has assisted with the event, says that learning about such miracles has been an invaluable teaching opportunity.
“We would never get the chance to touch on stuff like this in our normal curriculum,” Hackman explains. “Maryann and the other teens have even visited our classes to teach their peers about it —much like Carlo did.”
“I’ve already been through the exhibit three times,” says seventh-grader Zac Rowland, adding that his favorite panel is the account of the Miracle of Taumako Island (an incident which occurred off the coast of Panama in 1906, when a tsunami was apparently repelled when the local priest approached the shoreline bearing aloft the monstrance).
Miracles of the Eucharist will be open for a final day on Sunday, Oct. 31, from 11:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Large groups are requested to first make reservations by calling 401-932-7651.
