Tag: Christianity

In a joyful moment after the rosary on St. Bernadette Soubirous’ feast day April 16 at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes in France, the shrine’s rector, Father Michel Daubanes, announced that a 72nd miracle at the famed pilgrimage site has been recognized.

The sanctuary also confirmed the news on X, saying that Italian woman Antonietta Raco, who suffered from primary lateral sclerosis, “was cured in 2009 during her pilgrimage to Lourdes.”

Primary lateral sclerosis, known as PLS, is a type of motor neuron disease that affects the nerve cells in the brain that control movement. The breakdown of nerve cells in PLS causes weakness in the muscles that control the legs, arms and tongue, leaving a patient on a wheelchair.

Raco’s Italian diocese rejoiced on April 16, confirming the news.

Bishop Vincenzo Carmine Orofino of Tursi-Lagonegro in southern Italy officially declared the miraculous nature of the healing of Raco April 16.

“Following a pilgrimage to the Grotto of Lourdes in the summer of 2009, after bathing in the pools, on her return home, Mrs. Raco began to move independently and the effects of the unfortunate disease immediately and definitively disappeared,” Bishop Orofino said.

He added that “after a long period of careful investigation,” the International Medical Committee of Lourdes — an official medical body investigating possible miracles — “declared the healing of the lady to be medically unexplained in the current state of scientific knowledge.”

The news arrived merely four months after confirming the 71st miracle at the sanctuary, which had been granted to a British soldier, wounded during World War I.

David Torchala, the sanctuary’s director of communications, told OSV News: “We are delighted to receive this news from Italy.

“We always wonder why there are so few recognized miracles, only 72, compared to the millions of people who come to Lourdes,” but, he said, “it is important to understand that these miracles are the result of long and arduous medical procedures, research and diagnoses. It’s a long and rigorous process. It also presupposes that cured patients come back to Lourdes to report it, and agree to undergo all this research and further examinations.”

Torchala told OSV News that “there are currently over 7,000 cases that have been studied and for which declarations of healing have been attested. But then, the final decision to recognize a miracle rests with the bishop of the diocese of the patient who has been cured.”

He said that after the scientific work of the doctors, “it’s up to the church to recognize that there has indeed been the hand of God in a cure.”

Torchala emphasized that in addition to the story of the healed woman, “it is an opportunity to pay tribute to all the organizers and volunteers of this extraordinary pilgrimage, the Italian ‘Unitalsi.’”

“Italians are the most numerous visitors to Lourdes after the French,” he said, adding that they “have a long history of friendship with Lourdes. They come in great numbers, even though they have thousands of their own magnificent churches and sanctuaries dedicated to the Virgin.”

“Unitalsi is a huge organization that brings in pilgrims all year round from all over Italy. Without all the hospitaliers and volunteers who devote themselves all year round to the sick, this woman wouldn’t have been able to come to Lourdes,” Torchala stressed.

Bernadette witnessed 18 Marian apparitions beginning on Feb. 11, 1858, and people of her time witnessed first physical and spiritual healing miracles after visiting the shrine or drinking or washing in the spring Our Lady pointed Bernadette to in an apparition.

Lourdes’ baths have fully reopened after the COVID-19 pandemic in August 2024. The sick, people with disabilities and all other pilgrims can fully immerse in the chilly spring waters in the sanctuary — a powerful spiritual moment of healing and cleansing for many.

The Italian diocese of the healed woman responded to the recognized miracle saying, “Praise be to God, who with this divine sign has once again manifested his presence among his People and has given us his Most Holy Mother, Mary Immaculate, as a powerful mediator of Grace.”

A U.S. district judge this week permanently blocked the federal government from requiring some Catholic employers to accommodate abortions and in vitro fertilization (IVF) for their employees.

North Dakota District Judge Daniel Traynor said in the Tuesday order that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) would be “permanently enjoined” from forcing the Catholic Benefits Association and the Diocese of Bismarck to abide by the Biden-era federal rule.

The EEOC had originally announced the revision to the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act in April 2024. The rule change expanded the scope of accommodations that employers must make for “pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions” to also include workers’ decisions about “having or choosing not to have an abortion” as well as treatments like IVF, both of which the Catholic Church forbids.

The Catholic benefits group and the Bismarck Diocese had filed suit against the directive last June. Traynor had issued a preliminary injunction against the rule in September.

In his ruling this week Traynor made the block permanent. The EEOC rule, he said, “violates [the] sincerely held religious beliefs” of the Catholic plaintiffs and runs afoul of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Dave Uebbing, a spokesman for the Catholic Benefits Association, told CNA on Thursday that the ruling applies to all of the 91 dioceses with which the group does business. The benefits group offers human resources support and guidance for Catholic employers.

Uebbing noted that the order further covers “not only our members but also our future members. If people join in the future, it will cover them.”

The order was further “unprecedented,” Uebbing noted, because it also applies to “people who do business with our members.”

“In particular, that comes into play when dealing with health plans,” he said. “Let’s say you have your health plan, but you have a third-party administrator that runs it — under the ruling, they’re not obliged to follow these federal laws and regulations that are discriminatory toward Catholics.”

The decision comes as a similar lawsuit brought by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) plays out in federal court.

The USCCB filed the lawsuit last May alongside the Catholic University of America (CUA) and several dioceses. The plaintiffs in that suit are represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. In June 2024 a district court blocked the government from enforcing the rule against the USCCB while the lawsuit continues.

Ryan Colby, a spokesman for Becket, told CNA on Thursday that the bishops’ lawsuit is “still ongoing and we’re awaiting a final judgment from the court that would provide permanent protection to USCCB, CUA, and the dioceses.”

This week’s court order “is a promising step forward, but more protection is necessary,” he said.

The U.S. bishops said last year that the EEOC rule was “indefensible.”

Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, Bishop Kevin Rhoades said at the time that though the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) was “a pro-life law that protects the security and physical health of pregnant mothers and their preborn children,” the EEOC directive “twist[ed] the law in a way that violates the consciences of pro-life employers by making them facilitate abortions.”

In comments opposing the rule before it was finalized, the bishops argued that abortion “is neither pregnancy nor childbirth.”

“And it is not ‘related’ to pregnancy or childbirth as those terms are used in the PWFA because it intentionally ends pregnancy and prevents childbirth,” they said.

A British Catholic bishop has welcomed a ruling by the U.K. Supreme Court that a woman is defined solely by biological sex.

Justice Patrick Hodge, the court’s deputy president, said in the April 16 judgment that the terms woman and sex in the 2010 Equality Act “refer to a biological woman and biological sex.”

The ruling means that any man who legally changes sex, or asserts a feminine gender, will not have access to women’s sex-based rights.

The decision is expected to prevent people who identify as transgender women from accessing female-only spaces such as bathrooms, changing rooms and hospital wards or competing in female-only sports, carrying out strip searches on women if they are police officers, or serving in parts of the armed forces.

Bishop Philip Egan of Portsmouth said in an April 16 written statement to OSV News that he was very pleased by the ruling.

Bishop Egan said: “I’m delighted that the Supreme Court has stood firm against the gender ideologues by affirming that biological sex is a God-given reality: ‘male and female he created them’” (Gen 1:27).

“Males and females are equal and complementary and this is the basis of marriage, family life and society,” he said. “Our biological sex is moreover the basis of our own personal identity and our vocation in life.

“I am pleased too that the Supreme Court is by implication here also upholding the importance and dignity of the human body,” wrote Bishop Egan.

“At the same time however we must always lovingly respect and care for those who for whatever reasons, physical or psychological, are struggling with their gender identity,” he added.

The case was brought to court by a feminist advocacy group called For Women Scotland, which challenged the decision by the Scottish government to include transgender women in its definition of women.

In the ruling, Justice Hodge said: “Interpreting ‘sex’ as certificated sex would cut across the definitions of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ … and, thus, the protected characteristic of sex in an incoherent way.”

He said: “The unanimous decision of this court is that the terms woman and sex in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex.”

The judge said that the ruling should not be interpreted as “a triumph of one or more groups in our society at the expense of another,” adding that transgender individuals remain protected from unjust discrimination by other parts of the Equality Act.

The ruling was welcomed by the Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, who praised the tenacity of the campaigners on X, and added: “Spare a thought today for the UK employers, government departments, health boards, academic institutions and sporting bodies who’ve been breaking equality law to appease activist groups. So many HR manuals to pulp. So many out-of-court settlements to pay.”

Evolutionary biologist and author Richard Dawkins also took to X to praise the court ruling, describing it as “a stunning victory for women. And for science. Nice to have something to celebrate, for a change”.

Gender ideology emerged in the early 1990s and spread throughout the world in succeeding decades.

It dismisses biological and scientific categories of male and female in favor of an individual constructing a “gender” of their own choosing.

In the last decade, it has caused an explosion in the number of people across the Western world who want to change their sex.

Pope Francis has repeatedly spoken against gender ideology. In paragraph 155 of “Laudato Si’,” his 2015 papal encyclical on the environment, he said:

“The acceptance of our bodies as God’s gift is vital for welcoming and accepting the entire world as a gift from the Father and our common home, whereas thinking that we enjoy absolute power over our own bodies turns, often subtly, into thinking that we enjoy absolute power over creation. Learning to accept our body, to care for it and to respect its fullest meaning, is an essential element of any genuine human ecology,” the pontiff wrote.

Pope Francis has since denounced the ideology publicly as part of a “great enemy of marriage” and as “one of the most dangerous ideological colonizations.”

In April 2024, the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith explicitly rejected gender ideology in a declaration called “Dignitas Infinita” (“Infinite Dignity”) because it “envisages a society without sexual differences, thereby eliminating the anthropological basis of the family.”

The dicastery said that “all attempts to obscure reference to the ineliminable sexual difference between man and woman are to be rejected.”

While he did not celebrate Mass or wash the feet of inmates, Pope Francis made his customary Holy Thursday visit to a detention facility, arriving at Rome’s Regina Coeli jail at about 3 p.m. April 17.

The pope was welcomed by Claudia Clementi, the jail’s director, and met with about 70 inmates in the building’s rotunda, a space where various wings of the jail intersect. The inmates who joined the pope are those who regularly participate in the jail’s religious education program, the Vatican press office said.

In 2018 the pope had celebrated the Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord’s Supper at Regina Coeli, which is less than a mile from the Vatican. But his continuing convalescence, after spending more than a month in the hospital, meant there was no Mass or foot washing ritual.

Pope Francis told the inmates, “Every year I like to do what Jesus did on Holy Thursday, washing feet, in a prison,” the Vatican said. “This year I cannot do it, but I can and want to be close to you. I pray for you and your families.”

The pope personally greeted each of the people in the rotonda, prayed the Lord’s Prayer with them and gave his blessing.

Vatican photos of the visit also show him in the prison yard waving at inmates looking out the barred windows of their cells and waving from the rotonda to inmates pressed together against an iron and glass door hoping to see him.

The Italian Ministry of Justice website said that as of April 16, there were 1,098 men detained in the jail awaiting trial or sentencing. The facility is designed to hold fewer than 700 prisoners.

As he left the prison, sitting in the front passenger seat of a small car, he stopped to speak to reporters and told them, “Every time I enter these doors, I ask myself, ‘Why them and not me?’”

He has explained on several occasions that all people are sinners, himself included, but grace, providence, family upbringing and other factors play a determining role.

Pope Francis, who was elected in 2013, has continued a Holy Thursday practice he began as archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina: usually celebrating the Mass of the Lord’s Supper at a prison or detention facility and washing the feet of inmates.

In his first year as pope, he set aside the usual papal practice of washing the feet of 12 priests during a public celebration of the Holy Thursday Mass by going to a juvenile detention facility and washing the feet of Catholic and non-Catholic teens. He returned to the same jail in 2023 to wash the feet of young men and women.

In 2014, he washed the feet of people with severe physical handicaps at a rehabilitation center, and in 2016, he celebrated the liturgy and foot-washing ritual at a center for migrants and refugees.

On Holy Thursday in 2020, the COVID lockdown led the pope to celebrate the Mass at the Vatican with a small congregation and omit the optional foot-washing ritual.

Pope Francis also has celebrated the Mass at prisons outside Rome — in the towns of Paliano, Velletri and Civitavecchia.

After the pope’s “private” visit to Regina Coeli, Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, archpriest of St. Peter’s Basilica, celebrated the basilica’s parish Mass of the Lord’s Supper.

Acts 10:34, 37–43 / Ps. 118:1–2, 16–17, 22–23 / Col. 3:1–4 / Jn. 20:1–9

Jesus is nowhere visible. Yet today’s Gospel tells us that Peter and John “saw and believed.”

What did they see? Burial shrouds lying on the floor of an empty tomb. Maybe that convinced them that he hadn’t been carted off by grave robbers, who usually stole the expensive burial linens and left the corpses behind.

But notice the repetition of the word “tomb” — seven times in nine verses. They saw the empty tomb and they believed what he had promised: that God would raise him on the third day.

Chosen to be his “witnesses,” today’s First Reading tells us, the apostles were “commissioned … to preach … and testify” to all that they had seen — from his anointing with the Holy Spirit at the Jordan to the empty tomb.

More than their own experience, they were instructed in the mysteries of the divine economy, God’s saving plan — to know how “all the prophets bear witness” to him (see Luke 24:27, 44).

Now they could “understand the Scripture,” could teach us what he had told them — that he was “the Stone which the builders rejected,” which today’s Psalm prophesies his resurrection and exaltation (see Luke 20:17; Matthew 21:42; Acts 4:11).

We are the children of the apostolic witnesses. That is why we still gather early in the morning on the first day of every week to celebrate this feast of the empty tomb, give thanks for “Christ our life,” as today’s Epistle calls him.

Baptized into his death and resurrection, we live the heavenly life of the risen Christ, our lives “hidden with Christ in God.” We are now his witnesses, too. But we testify to things we cannot see but only believe; we seek in earthly things what is above.

We live in memory of the apostles’ witness, like them eating and drinking with the risen Lord at the altar. And we wait in hope for what the apostles told us would come — the day when we, too, “will appear with him in glory.”

I will wager that most people reading this have no idea who St. Fiacre was and what he has in common with the Beatles.

The whimsical Beatles song, “When I’m 64,” is a projection into a beautiful future with the singer joyfully looking forward to growing old with his true love, where even the simplest pleasures, such as “doing the garden, digging the weeds,” are things devoutly to be wished for. It is a tender piece of fluff, and now a wry twist of pop culture lore as the young man who penned the song in 1967 about what life might be like for someone at the ripe old age of 64 is going to be 83 in June.

Granted, a seventh-century Irish hermit was not going to make the cover of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” but as the patron saint of gardeners, he would have appreciated the sentiment in one of that album’s catchiest songs. There must have been more than one occasion when St. Fiacre was doing his garden while digging the weeds. Maybe a seventh-century chant helped him in this tedium; I am almost positive he used the opportunity to pray and probably offer up the pain in his back and the aches in his fingers as an act of self-mortification.

I do a lot of gardening myself. To be more accurate, my wife does a lot of gardening; I do a lot of digging and weeding. When the days elongate and that smell of growing grass returns, I know I have a date with destiny with our raised garden bed.

This brings me to my knees, and I think of the lyrics to songs from my childhood and other things. As St. Fiacre knew, there is a spiritual discipline one can attach to menial labor, especially one as elementary as gardening. It may not rival the Rule of Benedict, but for us less than saintly types, it can be as productive as using the right kind of vegetable fertilizer on one’s tomatoes.

First off, gardening puts you many times on your knees, putting you in a naturally prayerful posture. And if you are as old or older as the title of the Beatles song, you have enough aches and pains to offer up that could put a serious dent in the purgatory population. Depending on how far you let the garden go, you might be spending a lot of time hunched over pulling and digging up any number of species of marauding flora that, if left unchecked, will choke the life out of the good plants and vegetables you want to grow.

I know it sounds like a fastball down the middle, and it probably is, but it is safe to assume God knew what he was doing when it came to inspiring the Lenten calendar. Whether Easter comes “early” or “late” on the calendar, the 40 days leading up to it coincide with preparing soil for growth.

As part of my Lenten journey, I try not to complain too much about the tedium of weeding the raised garden bed, the rose bushes and around a lilac tree my wife insists is a tree but looks more like a multi-pronged overgrown bush to me. I said I “try” not to complain too much.

Maybe this is my 21st-century version of a hair shirt, which is the best way to describe having to crawl underneath this beast of a tree or bush like I was a 1917 doughboy squirming under barbed wire. I have the kind of Irish skin that cuts from a dirty look, so when I come out from under that tree, my arms look like they were tied up inside a burlap sack with three tomcats.

Equating the toil and effort a good garden takes is probably why Jesus uses gardening allegories so readily throughout the Gospels. Mustard seeds, wheat, and chaff, to name a few. I do not think my efforts rise to the level of an ascetic saint living in a cave, but like St. Fiacre, I do appreciate how doing the “dirty” work of preparation of either my raised garden bed or my own soul can lead to a bounty for both.

“When the images of earth cling too tightly to memory, when the call of happiness becomes too insistent, it happens that melancholy rises in man’s heart: this is the rock’s victory, this is the rock itself. The boundless grief is too heavy to bear. These are our nights of Gethsemane.” — Albert Camus, from “The Myth of Sisyphus”

Many years ago, I had a thought that has stayed with me ever since: Maybe the whole reason I was born is so I can sit with Christ for an hour in the Garden at Gethsemane.

I remember the exact time of day and place: late afternoon, on the west side of Norton Avenue in LA’s Hancock Park, just south of 5th Street. I was in the midst of what had already been a long period of psychic anguish (and, as it happened, would continue for some time). I was starting out for my daily walk. I was devoid of joy. Nothing gave me pleasure. Nothing energized me. All I knew was to keep going to Mass, to stay close to Jesus.

The crucifixion, carried out before a jeering, spitting crowd, is horrifying to contemplate.

Each stage on the road to Calvary has its psychic counterpart for us. Still, we probably won’t be physically scourged, nor have a crown of thorns jammed on our head, nor be nailed to a cross in this life.

But the Garden of Gethsemane — the agony of anxiety that must be undergone in utter darkness alone, the terror of the unknown, the sense of being completely inadequate to what lies before us — is the province of every human being.

Everyone knows the agony of waiting to hear from a lost or missing loved one. Everyone knows the anxiety of waiting: for the results of a medical test (will the biopsy be negative?), or an academic test (will I qualify for this college?), or an interview (will I get this job?).

Can I pay my rent or feed my children? Will the ambulance come in time? Will he ask me on a second date? Will she marry me? Will the baby be healthy?

Will I die alone?

In a way, we are always in the Garden at Gethsemane, all our lives. As we age, we perhaps find ourselves ever more cognizant of our place there. Beneath all other anxieties is the anxiety, even if unconscious, of where, when, and how our earthly end will come.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus knew when and how his end would come. He knew, and he was terrified.

What does it mean to sweat tears of blood? “Hematohidrosis,” the National Institute of Health reports, “is a very rare condition in which an individual sweats blood. It may occur in an individual who is suffering from extreme levels of stress.”

Can we even imagine anxiety that extreme? And Jesus didn’t just sweat blood; he sweated tears of blood. He suffered extreme stress coupled with extreme sorrow: both at a level beyond comprehension.

It’s well documented that animals who know their time has come will often wander off to a place where they can be alone and die. The instinct is to hide from attackers. No such protection would be offered to our Savior.

The Garden at Gethsemane was a place where Jesus had often gone with his disciples to pray. He longed for them to pray with him now, but they were tired. He longed to be safe, but soon the Roman soldiers would come with their torches and whips.

People in prison awaiting their executions are in a position to be close to Christ. I think of Servant of God Joseph Müller (1894-1944), one of scores of priests executed by the Nazis (his crime was telling a joke about Hitler: under torture, he would not reveal the name of the person who told it to him). I think of Servant of God Jacques Fesch (1930-1957), a murderer who had a conversion experience while incarcerated in Paris before being guillotined. I think of Mikal Mahdi (1983-2025), another convicted murderer and the second man recently executed by firing squad in South Carolina.

I also think that during Holy Week, when I wake in the middle of the night, maybe a few things could wait until morning. Maybe I don’t need to grab my phone, right then, and research the call of a vermilion flycatcher, or the price of flights to Appleton, Wisconsin, or the player list for the French Open, or my checking account balance.

Could you not sit with me for an hour?

All through Lent, while out walking, I’ve prayed along with the Stations of the Cross by St. Alphonsus Liguori.

“My adorable Jesus, it was not Pilate; no, it was my sins that condemned You to die.”

“My beloved Jesus, it was not the weight of the cross but the weight of my sins which made You suffer so much.”

“My most gentle Jesus, how many times You have forgiven me; and how many times I have fallen again and begun again to offend You!”

Our human weaknesses, failures, faults, wounds, and predisposition to sin are so monumentally extreme that it took — and continues to take — the extreme suffering of the Crucifixion to reconcile us to God.

The least we can do is sit with Jesus for an hour in the Garden of Gethsemane as he contemplates his passion.

That’s all he asks. Just sit.

And while we’re at it, pray, “Remember me, Lord, when you come into your kingdom.”

U.S. Vice President JD Vance will be in Rome April 18 and has meetings planned with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state, his office said.

Although the visit had been rumored for weeks and was published on Meloni’s official schedule days early, the vice president’s office confirmed the trip April 16.

The announcement said Vance “and the second family” will travel to Italy and India April 18-24.

“The vice president will discuss shared economic and geopolitical priorities with leaders in each country,” the announcement said.

No mention was made of possible topics of discussion for Vance’s meeting with Cardinal Parolin.

The announcement did not provide a detailed schedule, but Vance, who became Catholic in 2019, could attend the Good Friday Liturgy of the Lord’s Passion in St. Peter’s Basilica April 18 or Easter morning Mass in St. Peter’s Square April 20.

The Vatican press office had said April 15 that it had no information to share about Vance’s trip, but if the vice president were to participate in one of the liturgies, it would let people know.

Pope Francis, who is recovering from respiratory infections, held a brief private meeting with Britain’s King Charles III and Queen Camilla April 9, but other heads of state who have visited the Vatican since he was released from the hospital met only with Cardinal Parolin and other officials of the Secretariat of State.

At the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington in late February, Vance had said he was “surprised” by Pope Francis’ criticism of the Trump administration’s immigration policy.

In a letter to the U.S. bishops a few weeks earlier, Pope Francis had praised the bishops for their efforts to assist migrants and refugees and repeated his criticism of the Trump administration’s declared plans to institute “mass deportations.”

Pope Francis had said, “The rightly formed conscience cannot fail to make a critical judgment and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality.”

Moriarty: What first drew us to Carlo Acutis was the authenticity of his faith. He was an ordinary teenager in many ways. He loved soccer, played video games, and enjoyed learning to code. But at the same time, he went to daily Mass, prayed the Rosary, and had a deep love for the Eucharist. Carlo wasn’t someone who rejected the world around him. He lived in it fully, yet his heart was clearly anchored in something deeper and more lasting.

For those of us working in the media, we are always searching for stories that break through the noise of the moment and speak to what truly matters. Carlo’s life is a powerful reminder that holiness is not about retreating from the world. It is about entering into it with purpose, with clarity, and with a sense of the eternal.

We were especially struck by the way he used his skills in technology. He wasn’t interested in drawing attention to himself. Instead, he built a website cataloguing Eucharistic miracles from around the world, sharing these stories in a way that was both beautiful and accessible. At a time when so much of the internet is filled with distraction and division, Carlo saw it as a space for communion. He used the tools of his generation not for consumption, but for connection. His witness reminded us that young people today need to hear that the Church is a place where they can bring their creativity, their curiosity, and their gifts — and that they are not only welcome, but deeply needed.

Roadmap to Reality is coming out as two other stories are being featured today: One is fictional – Adolescence, which is about a 13-year-old schoolboy arrested for the murder of a girl in his school, and is on Netflix; the other is true – the popular internet figure Andrew Tate is being accused of human trafficking and rape. He is famous for his misogynist views and describing a lifestyle based on partying and money. Is Carlo an antidote to this modern trend affecting boys and young men?

There’s no question that boys and young men today are navigating a difficult cultural moment. They’re bombarded with conflicting messages about success, identity, masculinity, and meaning. Much of what’s promoted in popular culture emphasizes image over substance, pleasure over purpose, and influence over integrity. In that landscape, it can be hard for young people—especially young men — to know who they’re supposed to be, or what kind of life is truly worth pursuing.

Carlo Acutis offers a radically different vision. He shows that it’s not only possible to live with faith and conviction in today’s world, but that doing so leads to joy, clarity, and peace. Carlo didn’t run from the challenges of being young in a digital age—he embraced the tools of his time and used them with purpose. He was creative, curious, kind, and prayerful. He didn’t try to impress people—he tried to serve them. And he did all of this not as a reaction against the culture, but as someone fully engaged in it, yet grounded in something deeper.

In many ways, Carlo is an antidote to the confusion and noise surrounding young men today. He shows that real strength lies in humility, that leadership comes from love, and that fulfillment doesn’t come from chasing attention but from giving your life away to something greater. That message is more urgent now than ever.

How did the visit to Rome affect the young people on the trip featured in the documentary?

As part of the documentary, we followed 150 high school students from North Dakota on a two-week pilgrimage to Rome and Assisi, organized by the University of Mary. In fact, this journey became the main through line of our film. We wanted to see the world as Carlo did, and provide young people with a real guide. Our co-director, Christian Surtz, accompanied them on the journey, capturing moments both grand and quiet — liturgies at St. Peter’s, visits to sacred sites, conversations on bus rides, and, most powerfully, the silence before the tomb of Carlo Acutis.

One of the most striking aspects of the trip was the decision to go phone-free. At first, it wasn’t easy. Many of the students expressed discomfort and even a bit of panic at being disconnected. But gradually, as the days passed, we witnessed a visible change. Freed from the noise of constant notifications, they began to open up—to one another, to the beauty around them, and to the presence of God. They laughed more. They talked longer. They paid attention in ways that felt rare and refreshing.

By the time they arrived in Assisi, something had shifted. Visiting Carlo’s tomb wasn’t just a stop on the itinerary—it became a moment of encounter. For many of the students, Carlo felt less like a distant saint and more like a companion. A teenager who lived with joy, devotion, and a deep love for the Eucharist, while also loving soccer, coding, and video games. Several students told us it was the first time they had seriously considered that holiness could be something for them too. One young man said, “I too can be a saint. It’s for me. It’s for everyone.”

That’s the kind of effect Carlo has. His life resonates not because he was perfect, but because he was real. And in a culture where young people are bombarded by voices telling them to chase influence, image, and self-gratification, Carlo’s quiet but powerful witness shows another way—a life rooted in the Eucharist, in service, and in wonder.

What do we mean by calling him “God’s Influencer”?

When Carlo is referred to as God’s influencer, it’s not meant as a catchy label or a marketing phrase. It speaks to the heart of how he lived and how he used the tools of his time to lead others toward something greater than himself.

Carlo understood the culture he was part of. He knew the digital world — how it worked, how it captured attention, and how it shaped lives. But instead of using technology to build a platform or draw attention to himself, he used it to evangelize. His now-famous website cataloguing Eucharistic miracles wasn’t created for recognition; it was created out of love for the Eucharist and a desire to help others encounter Christ.

What made his influence so powerful was that it wasn’t limited to the internet. His daily life was filled with quiet acts of charity, kindness, and prayer. He defended kids who were picked on, gave to those in need, and constantly pointed others toward Jesus — often without saying much at all. His witness was simple, but deeply compelling.

The film will be in movie theatres from April 27-29.

Thousands of Catholics across the country will unite in prayer for pregnant and parenting moms in need during an April 19-27 novena inspired by St. Gianna Beretta Molla, an Italian doctor, wife and mother who sacrificed her own life for the life of her child.

The novena is sponsored by Walking With Moms in Need, an initiative of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington.

St. Gianna “is a powerful patron for pregnant and parenting mothers,” says the text for the first day of the novena posted on the Walking With Moms in Need website, www.walkingwithmoms.com/saint-gianna-novena.

“As a physician, wife, and mother, she knew intimately what it was like to struggle with a challenging medical diagnosis during pregnancy,” the text continues. “We ask St. Gianna’s prayers for all women who are pregnant during this time, especially those who are particularly vulnerable, that they be supported and strengthened by God and their loved ones.”

While pregnant with her fourth child in 1961, St. Gianna learned she had a tumor in her uterus. Doctors discussed having an abortion to preserve St. Gianna’s life. Instead, she chose to only have the tumor removed, understanding this could save her child but lead to further, perhaps deadly, complications for her.

Both the baby and St. Gianna survived the surgery. Knowing she could lose her life delivering her child, St. Gianna prayed to God and told the doctors and her family: “If you must decide between me and the child, do not hesitate, choose the child. I insist on it. Save the baby.”

On April 21, 1962, Gianna Emanuela Molla was born. Over the next few days, her mother experienced serious complications and despite several treatments, died a week after giving birth.

As word spread of St. Gianna’s action, the Catholic Church opened her cause for sainthood. She was beatified by St. John Paul II in 1994 and canonized in 2004.

The first day of the novena is a prayer offered “for all women facing difficult or challenging pregnancies.” Prayers on subsequent days are offered for: all health care workers; healthy supportive marriages; family life; service organizations; faithful to be inspired by service; families facing a difficult or challenging diagnosis; the sick; and all mothers.

The full text of the novena can be found in English and Spanish on the Walking With Moms in Need site, which has a link for participants to sign up to receive daily emails with the novena intention, prayers and a brief reflection. It also has a link to a Vatican biography of the saint.