St. UX

November 25, 2024 11:31 AM

Pope Francis clears path for canonization of Blessed Carlo Acutis
posted by chavenet (28 comments total)

Huh, I thought he'd already been canonized. They've been fast-tracking this one with a lot of fanfare.
posted by tclark at 11:34 AM on November 25 [1 favorite]

He's Blessed, so that's a step towards Canonization. They have a lot of hoops to jump through.

The miracle attributed to him here is absurd: A woman in Costa Rica prayed to him after her daughter had a bicycle accident. The daughter recovered. THIS is what counts as a miracle these days? Embarassing.
posted by dis_integration at 11:44 AM on November 25 [20 favorites]

THIS is what counts as a miracle these days? Embarassing.

Miracles are hard to prove nowadays! Modern miracle investigators: "Pics or it didn't happen."
posted by charred husk at 11:58 AM on November 25 [5 favorites]

St. UX is surely Walter Gropius.

(Don Norman isn’t dead, otherwise I imagine he’d be a shoe-in.)
posted by Going To Maine at 12:07 PM on November 25 [11 favorites]

"The miracle regarded the healing of an indigenous man in Cape Verde named Sorino Yanomami, who was attacked by a jaguar on February 7, 1996, in the Amazonian forest."

This is surely a miracle, considering that Cape Verde is in Africa.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 12:22 PM on November 25 [15 favorites]

There’s more than one Cabo Verde?
posted by zamboni at 1:10 PM on November 25 [5 favorites]

The miracle attributed to him here is absurd: A woman in Costa Rica prayed to him after her daughter had a bicycle accident. The daughter recovered. THIS is what counts as a miracle these days? Embarassing.

Millennials are killing the canonization industry?
posted by It is regrettable that at 1:20 PM on November 25 [21 favorites]

St. UX is surely Walter Gropius.

I was going to say Edward Tufte. Also would have accepted Jared Spool.

(Both still alive? So not technically eligible yet...)
posted by gimonca at 1:26 PM on November 25 [4 favorites]

There’s more than one Cabo Verde?

I'm sure there are many, but if you say "Cape Verde" without any contest, people are going to assume the country. Also, the Cabo Verde in Brazil is in southern Minas Gerais, which is literally at least a thousand kilometers from the Amazon rainforest.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 1:30 PM on November 25 [2 favorites]

There’s more than one Cabo Verde?

Looking into it, my best guess is that this is in fact an embarrassing geographical error by the Vatican (or the AP). Checking other accounts of what happened to Sorino, as his 'last name' indicates, he's a member of the Yanomami, who live in 200–250 villages in the Amazon rainforest on the border between Venezuela and Brazil. After the jaguar attack, a nun of the Consolata Missionaries had him flown to the regional capital, Boa Vista, Roraima for medical care. Someone has confused that for Boa Vista, Cape Verde, 4386 km away.
posted by zamboni at 1:31 PM on November 25 [16 favorites]

The Cape Verde error is in the Vatican press release; it's also not related to Acutis' miracles but to that of Blessed Giuseppe Allamano (1851-1926), who is also on Saints' Row.
posted by chavenet at 1:42 PM on November 25 [3 favorites]

Boy, I really hope somebody got excommunicated for that blunder!
posted by jedicus at 1:54 PM on November 25 [16 favorites]

who is also on Saints' Row

Hopefully not the recent, bad remake/reboot of the series.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 2:08 PM on November 25 [4 favorites]

His real canonization miracle was making avocado toast without avocados.
posted by dr_dank at 4:31 PM on November 25 [3 favorites]

As to saints, there are three grades of relics. Grade 1 is a physical piece of the saint, such as a finger bone. Grade 2 is some object that the saint had held, touched, had physical contact with. Grade 3 is something that may have been with the saint. I have a Grade 2 relic, an expired passport that has Mother Theresa’s autograph in it. It also has Derek Jacobi’s autograph on the opposite page, so it might be a relic on some other scale. No miracles though.
posted by njohnson23 at 4:56 PM on November 25 [7 favorites]

They had a piece of his heart (???) in our city's church recently. Not sure how they obtained that.
posted by Brodiggitty at 5:18 PM on November 25 [2 favorites]

Explain this to a non-Christian, please. How do Catholics know/decide whom to pray to? I know saints have particular portfolios, but under what circumstances would someone decide to pray to (to all appearances) some random dead kid?
posted by Faint of Butt at 5:46 PM on November 25 [6 favorites]

I'm really interested in process behind this. He's clearly on the fast-track to beatification. They exhumed his body 13 years after his death, moved it to a tomb in Assisi complete with a viewing window, and encased his body in a wax replica. As stated above, there is a relic with a piece of his heart in it. I'm both (not very) surprised this sort of things is still happening in the 21st century because it feels so very mediaeval, and curious about the craftspeople who continue the work of making relics and preparing the corpses of saints for display.
posted by thecjm at 6:45 PM on November 25 [7 favorites]

It's kind of like how memes work except that there is a central authority that ultimately decides which ones are dank.
posted by donio at 6:46 PM on November 25 [26 favorites]

Faint of Butt, I think of saints as being like an army of secretaries. God is busy, but they employ lots of specialists. Consult the directory (Compiled by more specialists) to see who’s most likely to help you and direct prayers and sacrifices thence. Remember “Not my will, but thine,” and you will never be disappointed.
posted by toodleydoodley at 7:26 PM on November 25 [6 favorites]

Acutis wasn’t exactly a random dead kid. Here’s the reported circumstance of how intercession was sought for the first miracle:

At the same time, a priest friend of the family, Fr. Marcelo Tenorio, learned online about the life of Carlo Acutis, and began praying for his beatification. In 2013 he obtained a relic from Carlo’s mother, and he invited Catholics to a Mass and prayer service in his parish, encouraging them to ask Acutis’ intercession for whatever healing they might need.

Mattheus’ mother heard about the prayer service. She decided she would ask Acutis to intercede for her son. In fact, in the days before the prayer service, Vianna made a novena for Acutis’ intercession, and explained to her son that they could ask Acutis to pray for his healing.

The official Roman Catholic position is that the Church doesn’t make saints, just recognize them, but it’s a lot easier for one to be recognized if your priest is directly suggesting people seek intercession from a given candidate.

For more on Catholicism and saints: Veneration, Intercession and Intercession of Saints.
posted by zamboni at 7:53 PM on November 25 [7 favorites]

He was born in 1991 and he's on the fast track to being a saint? Well now I really feel like shit. I'm decades older and no one's even prayed to me for intercession yet. And when I complain about it, everybody's all, "They also serve who only stand and wait." Yeah, well that's a load of bullshit.
posted by PlusDistance at 8:44 PM on November 25 [10 favorites]

It's definitely a very political process getting a saint, er, "recognized". Lots of organizing and lobbying.
posted by potrzebie at 11:02 PM on November 25 [3 favorites]

I'm decades older and no one's even prayed to me for intercession yet.

Customarily one has to die first but I'm not going to stand on ceremony.

Hey PlusDistance! I've got some high stakes emailing to do. I'm hoping that what needs to get said gets said, and with kindness. Could you ask God to help make that happen? I'm confident in the efficacy of your intercession because past experience suggests that God has a good sense of humor about this sort of thing.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 11:28 PM on November 25 [9 favorites]

I’m still waiting on Dorothy Day….
posted by childofTethys at 5:55 AM on November 26 [4 favorites]

...and Thomas Merton.
posted by the sobsister at 9:29 AM on November 26 [1 favorite]

Explain this to a non-Christian, please. How do Catholics know/decide whom to pray to?

Consider that thing you are supremely qualified to do for other people. The thing you can be relied upon, that if someone approaches you for that, you will likely succeed. That's your patronage.
Ok, now assume you die. Someone alive asks you for your help. Communicating to you despite knowing you're dead is praying to you. And by some unknown means, somehow you become aware that someone is still asking for your help. You're a saint. And by some other unknown means, you figure out a way to provide that help despite not having a body. That's a miracle. The people that you help tell others in the same situation, and you help those other people, because it's what you do for people, and death isn't stopping you.
If this happens often enough, and you were Catholic in life, and it catches the attention of living Catholics, and if enough of them take up your cause, you can be added to the official list of Catholic patron saints. Catholics can search a list of saints by patronage, find the saint's hagiography (the saint's official biography plus their documented miracles), and pray to them for help.
In addition to saints providing actual help to the living, there are also entities that scam the living. Those are demons. The Catholic church also has procedures to identify and banish demons. That is exorcism.
posted by otherchaz at 6:29 AM on November 27 [2 favorites]

Boy, I really hope somebody got excommunicated for that blunder!

The people responsible for excomunicating those responsible have just been excommunicated.
posted by TedW at 6:39 AM on November 27