The Brazilian young Akemi One will turn 15 in August, but her birthday gift will be advanced. And it was a surprise: he will travel to Rome for the canonization of Blessed Carlo Acutis on April 27. “I have not yet assimilated,” Akemi told ACI Digital. “It is as if they were my perfect 15 years: the canonization of Carlo Acutis, being there in the Vatican and in the jubilee year. It seems a dream come true.”
Akemi, from the municipality of Patos, in the state of Paraiba, is the sister of the Catholic influencer Ana Beatriz Medeiros, 25. Ana Beatriz met Father Fábio Vieira, who lived for a year with Carlo Acutis’s family in Italy. Last year, due to a health problem of his sister, he approached the saint. Akemi had an aggressive keratocyst. The treatment was long and aggressive, which included surgery for total removal and chemotherapy. “And a person, one of my followers told me: ‘Bia, ask Carlo, talk to him, that he will help you,” Ana Beatriz said.
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Thus began to ask for the intercession of Carlo Acutis, the Italian adolescent who died of leukemia at age 15. “I told him that, if I helped my sister, I would become her great friend.”
When, last September, everything went well with Akemi’s surgery, Ana Beatriz promised to talk about Carlo Acutis wherever it was.
Investigating Blessed, Ana Beatriz found the profile of Father Fábio Vieira on Instagram. The priest visited Carlo’s house in 2020 and, when everything closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, he stayed with the Acutis for a year. Today, he is one of the greatest promoters of devotion to the saint in Brazil.
In this year’s Carnival, Ana Beatriz participated in a retirement in Campina Grande, where Father Fábio was. She approached him and a friendship emerged. The priest, who will go to canonization with a group of pilgrims, invited her to join.
Without money to pay the trip, Ana Beatriz offered to cover the event on social networks. “The closest person we have Carlo is Father Fábio. I said: there are young people who cannot go to Rome, but they would like to be there. Then, it will be through you that people will see it,” Ana Beatriz said.
The money he was saving to buy a car received another destination. “The car can buy it later, but this is just once in life,” said Ana Beatriz.
Soon the idea that Akemi was too. “My whole family helped to take me there,” Akemi recalled.
Akemi says that he is still “building” the friendship with the saint that his sister already has. “I met him through my friends. I still don’t know his story, but I already inspired him, because I want to be more and more holy,” he said.
For the student, this pilgrimage will be an opportunity to “approach Carlo Acutis.”
“I think I will identify much more with him, I will connect more with him,” he added
Disagreement of dates
According to some travel agencies, many young Brazilians thought to go to Carlo Acutis canonization in the Vatican. But, due to a dates, they will not be able to.
“Together with all the Catholic youth, we hoped that the Canonization of Carlo Acutis coincided with the jubilee of youth,” which will be from July 28 to August 3, said Rainha das Pilgrinações (RDP Viagens) Marketing Coordinator (RDP Viagens), Natálaia Carneiro Leão.
As the date of the Canonization of Carlo, on April 27, it was not announced by the Holy See until November last year, “more or less 400 people were already registered and had paid to go to the jubilee of youth” and could not change the date. In addition, he stressed, “there is the issue of school holidays”, which in Brazil are in July.
Different reasons, but the same devotion
Father Marlon Múcio, whom in 2019 he was diagnosed a rare disease, the deficiency of the Riboflavina transporter (RTD), and in 2023 he founded the House of Health Nuestra Señora de los Rare, in Taubaté, will also take a group of 24 people to the Canonization of Carlo, “the majority of medium age.”
The group also has a special motivation for this pilgrimage. “We are devoted to Blessed Carlo Acutis. He is the copatrón of our hospital here in Taubaté,” the father told ACI Digital, highlighting that Carlo “died as a result of a rare leukemia.” “At that time (2006), which was practically yesterday, there was no cure, not even treatment. Today there is already, but it is a rare form of leukemia,” he added.
For Father Marlon Múcio, this great interest is due to the “impact that Carlo has” on people’s lives. “In such a short space of life, in such a short life, he lived heroically. He embraced holiness and points to us very specific and in the small things of day to day, in common things, how to be holy,” he said.
The Cleide Tavares Confirmation Catechist from Oliveira Araipe, from Sorocaba, also sees her journey for Carlo’s canonization as “a mission.”
“The youth of confirmation follow with great expectation the canonization of Carlo Acutis, it is always a cause of conversations in our encounters. They found in Carlo Acutis a mature faith, the love of Jesus, a perspective for eternity and not for the things of the world,” he said.
“It is for them, that they are young and are following this trajectory from the beatification (in 2020), that I go to this pilgrimage,” said Cleide, who met Carlo Acutis with his confirmation group and ended up becoming devout.
“It is for them, that they are young and are following this trajectory from the beatification (in 2020), that I go to this pilgrimage,” said Cleide, who met Carlo Acutis with his confirmation group and ended up becoming devout.
The catechist said that her catechizans asked her that, when she is in the canonization in the Vatican and when she visits Carlo’s tomb in Assisi, make a video call with them. “I told them that within the possibilities, even of local permits, I want to make the call with them. If it is not possible live, even because of the time difference, I will record and send the place where Carlo Acutis’s body is. Also in the Vatican, the day of canonization.”
“Although they have access through images and transmissions, knowing that someone was praying for them … that has been my commitment, so that they feel represented there in prayer and in a communion of faith,” he said.
Father Marlon Múcio also encourages those who cannot go to canonization in the Vatican to follow “all by the Catholic media.” “They will feel there, because we believe that, by the force of the Catholic faith, by the force of the Mass itself and for what we will live there, you connected in prayer climate, not only seeing by the media, but really participating, you will be present. I am sure that the good God and Carlo will be very close to each one,” he said.
NATALIA ZIMBRÃO
Natalia Zimbrão has a degree in Journalism from the State University of Rio de Janeiro. He is a journalist from ACI Digital since 2015. He has previous experience in magazines, radio and online journalism.