A first-class relic of St. Carlo Acutis traveled to Columbus Our Lady of Victory Church on Tuesday, Feb. 17 for an annual gathering of consecrated religious sisters in the diocese and Bishop Earl Fernandes.
The evening included prayer, dinner and fellowship in the parish church and Victory Hall. This year’s gathering included the presence of St. Carlo Acutis, the Church’s first millennial saint.
St. Carlo’s relics visited two schools earlier Tuesday morning and Westerville St. Paul the Apostle Church the day prior on Feb. 16.
Relics are traveling to several dioceses in Ohio, including Columbus, with Msgr. Anthony Figueiredo, a priest of Assisi, Italy, who tends to the relics.
Several religious orders in the Columbus diocese venerated the relic: the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians (Salesian Sisters), Little Servant Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary – FIH, Children of Mary, Apostolic Sisters of St. John, Sisters of Our Lady of Kilimanjaro, Daughters of Holy Mary of the Heart of Jesus, Dominican Sisters of Peace, and the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist.
The gathering began in the church with Vespers, or Evening Prayer, part of the Church’s Liturgy of the Hours prayed daily by clergy, religious and many laity. A dinner with Bishop Fernandes in Victory Hall was held immediately following.
During Vespers, Msgr. Figueiredo spoke, sharing about the relic and life of St. Carlo. Religious sisters had an opportunity afterward to venerate.
“As I got closer to the relic, even when I was just waiting in line, I started to feel a peace come over me, like a deeper peace,” described Sister Faustina Maria, 33, who belongs to the Children of Mary.
“I put my rosary on the relic, … and then I put my hand there, and I would just close my eyes, and I had my hand on the relic, and it was very clear to me, he is in heaven – the joy of him, and I could have just stayed there.”
Sister Nicole Daly, a Salesian sister who teaches at Columbus St. Francis de Sales High School, and St. Carlo were born in 1991. “Carlo has always been a very special friend of mine because we were born the same year,” she noted.
The high school teacher interceded for her students while venerating his relic.
“I know that he’s had such an amazing effect on them,” she said. “When I was venerating the relic, I was just praying for them and asking him to continue to help them to fall in love with the Eucharist.”
Sister Bozena, who belongs to the Little Servant Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, was struck by the ordinariness of Carlo’s life.
The young boy, who died at age 15 from leukemia, was a devout Catholic, yet his life was not unlike those around him. Sister Bozena reflected on the reality while kneeling before him.
“The community that we belong to, it’s about simplicity,” she said. “Our founder (Blessed Edmund Bojanowski) was a very simple man as well, and I’m thinking, this young man (Carlo) is so simple.”
Sister Faustina Maria, who entered the Children of Mary in 2012 and took her final vows in 2018, added, most striking perhaps, was a profound sense of the saint’s presence.
“It’s hard to put into words, but he was very much there in that moment,” she affirmed. “I felt like I tasted just a tiny dot of the joy that he’s experiencing.”
