Chapel of the miracle of the beatification of San Carlo Acutis is elevated to a sanctuary

The chapel of Our Lady Aparecida and San Carlo Acutis in Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul (Brazil), known as the chapel of the miracle of the beatification of Carlo Acutis, was elevated to a sanctuary on October 12 by the Archbishop of Campo Grande, Bishop Dimas Lara Barbosa. It is considered the first sanctuary in the world dedicated to San Carlo Acutis.

“This sanctuary will have the main purpose of promoting Marian piety, devotion to San Carlo Acutis, love of the Holy Eucharist and welcoming pilgrims, especially young people,” the prelate wrote in his decree.

Saint Carlo Acutis was canonized on September 7 by Pope Leo XIV, at a Mass in Saint Peter’s Square in the Vatican. He is the first saint millennialthe generation of those born from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s. Acutis is known as “cyberapostle of the Eucharist”, “apostle of the millennials” and, more recently, “apostle of the Internet”, because he was a disseminator of Eucharistic miracles through the Internet, having created a website for that purpose.

The young man said that the Eucharist was his highway to heaven. He was born on May 3, 1991, in London (United Kingdom), and lived his childhood and youth in Milan (Italy), where his family had returned. He died at the age of 15 from leukemia on October 12, 2006, the day of Our Lady Aparecida, and was beatified in 2020 in Assisi (Italy).

Bishop Barbosa also said in his decree that the chapel dedicated to Our Lady Aparecida of the San Sebastián parish “has been over the years a center of piety and intense devotion to San Carlo Acutis”, especially because in that church “the miracle that made possible” Carlo’s beatification occurred and because it is a “peculiar place of pilgrimage, prayer and achieved graces.”

The prelate recognized the new sanctuary as a “space of particular relevance for the spiritual life of the people of God”, seeing “that the canonization of San Carlo Acutis”, which occurred on September 7, “aroused great fervor in other faithful, especially young people, becoming a luminous example of holiness in ordinary life and of love for the Eucharist.”

Carlo Acutis, said Bishop Barbosa in his homily, is not “a saint only of the young; on the contrary, devotion to Carlo Acutis develops in all ages” and he stressed: “That is a curious thing.”

The archbishop also emphasized that “the life of Carlo Acutis has a lot to do with Brazil”, given that “the first miracle happened here: October 12; the day chosen to be his memory: October 12.”

“What’s more, that may be an element that we should resort to now so that Brazil can authorize even the feast of Carlo Acutis to be celebrated on another day, because there is no way to depose Our Lady, and put another in her place,” said the archbishop, highlighting that “throughout history, saints in general always had a great devotion to Our Lady” and “Carlo Acutis was no different.”

“If it is the task of the Holy Spirit to make the saints, see that Our Lady provides a very important collaboration in all of this. Because she does not intercede for us only against external snares or against the palace intrigues that may be inside or outside the Church, but she also intercedes for our own sanctification,” said Bishop Barbosa, highlighting that, “if the saints had great devotion to Our Lady, that for us is a great testimony that she “It must occupy an increasingly special place within the Church.”

Translated and adapted by the ACI Prensa team. Originally published in ACI Digital.