You shouldn’t buy a piece of a saint, says Catholic Church
ASSISI, ITALY—With the upcoming canonization of its first millennial saint, the Catholic Church has turned to police in Italy to investigate the online sale of some purported relics of Carlo Acutis, who already has been drawing hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to his shrine.
Since the early days of the faith, many Catholics have prayed for intercession to saints’ relics—usually small parts of their body or clothing that are authenticated by ecclesiastical authorities and preserved in churches. But their sale is strictly forbidden.
“It’s not just despicable, but it’s also a sin,” said the Rev. Enzo Fortunato, who leads the Vatican’s World Children’s Day committee and has a tiny fragment of Acutis’ hair in a chapel by his office for veneration by visiting youth. “Every kind of commerce over faith is a sin.”
Online auction
An anonymous seller had put up for online auction some supposedly authenticated locks of Acutis’ hair that were fetching upward of 2,000 euros ($2,200), according to the Diocese of Assisi, before being taken down.
Last month, Bishop Domenico Sorrentino asked authorities to confiscate the items and added that if fraudulent, the sale would constitute a “great offense to religious belief.”
Acutis died of leukemia in 2006, when he was only 15 but had already developed a precocious faith life centered on devotion to the Eucharist—which for Catholics holds the real presence of Christ.
Eucharistic miracles
Savvy with technology, he had created an online exhibit about eucharistic miracles through the centuries.
He will formally be declared a saint at a Mass in front of the Vatican’s St. Peter’s Basilica on April 27.
Over the past year, about 1 million pilgrims have flocked to the central Italian town of Assisi, where his body—wearing sneakers, jeans, and a sweatshirt—lies in a shrine in a church dedicated to a key moment in the life of medieval hometown saint, St. Francis.
Acutis’ body was exhumed during the more-than-decade-long canonization process and treated so it could be preserved for public showing.
