'He was one of us', Bishop Nicholas Hudson on St Carlo Acutis

Bishop Hudson blesses relic of St Carlo Acutis

Thy Kingdom Come, a global ecumenical prayer movement, has released a new interview with Bishop Nicholas Hudson in which he reflects on the extraordinary life of Saint Carlo Acutis. In his own words, Bishop Hudson shares the following:

Saint Carlo "died very young - he wasn't quite 16 when he died. He was diagnosed almost overnight with a very, very serious leukemia. And as soon as he was told of the diagnosis, he said, 'I'm going to offer this for Jesus, for the Church.'"

He was known in Milan "as the boy with the wonderful smile, whisking up old ladies' shopping and rushing ahead to their flats and leaving their stuff outside the door." He could sometimes be seen "in the supermarket, just getting a few euros out of his pocket to help somebody who didn't quite have enough." He "was a real friend of the poor" - forever coming in from school saying, "Mum, do you know I saw an old man looking really cold on the way back from school, do you think we might be able to give him that old coat that dad isn't using anymore?"

"He was the life and soul of the school. They say he was very funny in class - very funny, but never cruel. He'd stick up for any of the children with learning disabilities or other disabilities. He'd stick up for anybody who was being bullied."

Yet what his friends didn't know was that "he was also in love with the Eucharist, and that when he had time, he'd be popping in to church and going and praying to the Lord." He used to say: "The Eucharist is our highway to heaven. The more we receive the Eucharist, the more we become like Jesus." Gifted with technology, he "put his energy into creating a very impressive website of Eucharistic miracles."

When asked the day before he died whether he was in pain, he said: "There are a lot of people in this world suffering a lot more pain than me."

"They had his funeral in the local parish church and it was absolutely packed, not just with family and school friends, but with all the poor people of the locality."

"He does appeal to all generations, but he is a saint for teenagers. They look at him and say, this Carlo - he was one of us, wasn't he? He was just like us."

Bishop Hudson also describes the miracle that led Pope Francis to declare Carlo Blessed - "the step before being declared a saint." A five-year-old boy named Matheus in Brazil went to a prayer service with his grandfather where the parish priest had brought from Rome a relic of Carlo Acutis. Matheus had pancreatitis, meaning "everything that he ate and drank, he was vomiting up again - and that can kill a child."

Walking up the aisle hand in hand with his grandfather, Matheus asked what he should pray for. His grandfather said, "Just ask Carlo to pray for you, that you may stop vomiting." Matheus "came forward, held the relic, asked that favour of Carlo Acutis." Walking home afterwards, he told his grandfather: "Grandpa, I feel a very warm feeling in my tummy. Do you think I've been cured?"

When they arrived home, "Matheus rushed into the house, rushed straight into the kitchen, went up to his mother and said, 'I want rice and chips and beans and steak.' And he ate them all and didn't vomit up a single morsel of it. And he has never vomited since."

"Young people are very struck to hear of the miracles that seem to be being worked through the intercession of St. Carlo" - and, in the words of Bishop Hudson, that is perhaps the most powerful testament of all: that a boy who was "just like us" is now interceding for us from heaven.