Latest news with #canonisation
The Independent
22-05-2025
- General
- The Independent
The London-born teenager set to become Britain's first millennial saint
Saint-making in the Catholic Church – or canonisation as it is called – is traditionally a drawn-out, opaque process with the successful candidates who have emerged from it in recent times usually worthy but unsurprising long-dead clerics and nuns. That is why Carlo Acutis joining their heavenly ranks has caught the attention of so many. London-born, raised in Italy, this tech-savvy, deeply devout teenager tragically died aged just 15 from leukaemia in 2006. Pope Francis's decision in 2024 to approve his canonisation saw him labelled 'the first millennial saint'. As with many of the late Pope's bold, breaking-with-precedent decisions, this one appeared to be based, in part at least, on a realisation that the Church feels alien and irrelevant to many young people because of its outdated stance on sex before marriage, women's equality and same-sex relationships. Holding up Acutis as a role model – which is part of their job description – is therefore showing a sceptical young audience that Catholicism isn't only for the old and the conservative. If in doubt of the symbolic power of Carlos Acutis, take a look at the stained-glass window featuring him that was installed in 2022 in St Aldhelm's Catholic Church in Malmesbury. Unlike the medieval bishop in vestments and carrying a crozier in the window next door, he is depicted dressed in standard 2006 teenager garb, with a digital watch and a phone strapped to his rucksack. In other words: very ordinary, very now, yet simultaneously the Church has decided through its canonisation process someone extraordinary by dint of his religious devotion and his 'heroic virtue' in living his short life as 'a servant of God'. These are the key qualities for any saint in Catholicism's famously lengthy rulebook. Francis had planned to preside at the canonisation ceremony last month (the latest of 900 saints he had made during his reign, 813 of whom came from the 15th century), but it was postponed as the seriousness of the health problems that led to his death became apparent. No new date has yet emerged from his successor Leo XIV, but a popular American Catholic priest podcaster, David Michael Moses, is upping the ante by telling his 330,000 YouTube followers that the new pope already has a special connection with Carlo Acutis. That, he hopes, will mean that the canonisation could take place soon and be the first of this pontificate. The bond between the two rests, Moses enthuses, on the fact young Carlo did his secondary education at the Leo XIII Institute in Milan. 'What are the chances,' he says in his folksy way, 'that the school he's attending when he dies was named after Pope Leo XIII, the predecessor of our new Pope Leo XIV, the pope that Leo XIV says inspired him to choose the name? How cool is that?' And there is more. 'If that wasn't enough, listen to this quote from Carlo Acutis. 'I offer all the suffering I will have to suffer for the lord, for the pope, and for the Church.'' It might not pass muster as a watertight argument in a court of law, but in the Vatican, the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, which has been in charge of saint-making for centuries, assesses evidence in a very different way. Acutis, the boy now also referred to as 'God's Influencer', was born in 1991 in west London and baptised in Our Lady of Dolours parish in Chelsea. His Italian mother Antonia and half-Italian, half-English father Andrea moved to Milan six months later and raised their only child there. Early on, his banker parents say, he showed a particular empathy and social conscience, saving up his pocket money to hand over to good causes that helped the poor, or standing up for those bullied at his school. But it was the always present religious dimension in him that was so unusual in an age where church attendance, especially among the young in Italy, is in steep decline. When on family holidays at Centola in southern Italy, little Carlo would wander over as a child and join the group of old women who gathered each day to say the rosary on the beach. And it was Carlo who insisted on the family going to church each Sunday. Before that, his parents had been pretty much lapsed from the religion of their own upbringing. As a teen, he would cook food and deliver it to those who were homeless and on the streets of Milan. He became a catechist aged 12 in his local parish of Santa Maria Segreta, preparing younger children for their first communion. Next, the skills he mastered early with digital and computer technology saw him producing the parish newsletter and compiling and updating a public website that collected all reported miracles around the world attributed to the Virgin Mary and the Eucharist. It is all the more remarkable that he did all this while limiting himself to one hour a day on screens, his mother later stressed. When diagnosed with incurable leukaemia in 2006, he told her, 'I die happy because I didn't spend any minutes of my life on things God doesn't love.' For some parents, a child self-limiting to an hour of screen time per day would count as a miracle in itself, but the Vatican has a higher bar. To be declared a saint, there has to be evidence presented that praying to the candidate had precipitated two separate miraculous events. In 2020, the Vatican department in charge of canonisation published evidence that prayers directed to God via Carlo Acutis had cured a Brazilian youngster, Mattheus Vianna, from a rare disease. Pope Francis accepted these findings, reached after interviewing around 500 people, including medical experts who, it was said, could come up with no other plausible explanation. Then, in 2024, another report accepted that prayers made to Acutis had spared the life of a young woman in Florence who had had a bleed on her brain that doctors had said would kill her. There will, of course, be sceptics who question the science that leads to these conclusions, including many Catholics, who struggle to make sense of the randomness of these divine interventions when so many other tragedies occur each and every day. Others, too, point to the cost of the Vatican process of discernment, which has to be met by those putting forward the candidate. Pope Francis did move – in line with his wider embrace of what he referred to as 'a poor Church, for the poor' – to cut these charges, but they remain considerable. It may explain why usually only religious orders can afford to immortalise their brethren or sisters. Or the occasional wealthy family. Antonia Salzano, Carlo's mother, would add another miracle to the list. She was in her forties when her son died, and assumed she would never have another child. One night, he appeared to her in a dream and told her she would have twins. And, at 44, she did. Quite how the Vatican could verify that as true is hard to imagine, but getting too wrapped up in the process risks missing the point. The Church gets many things wrong about human beings, but it also gets a lot right, including that we do respond well to role models being held up in front of us to emulate. It was doing it long before the advent of social media. Moreover, there is an argument that connects the cult that has grown so quickly in recent years around Carlo Acutis with those others of his generation who, a recent survey by the Bible Society reported, are returning to the pews in surprising numbers. Perhaps the Church isn't quite so old-fashioned and otherworldly as we like to think.
Irish Times
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Author Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin: ‘I'll always be angry about the history of the church in Ireland'
Tell us about your debut novel, Ordinary Saints. Ordinary Saints is about Jay, a queer Irish woman living in London who finds out that her dead older brother, Ferdia, may become a Catholic saint. It was inspired by Carlo Acutis, the 'first millennial saint', who was due to be canonised two days after your book came out. Tell us about him and the whole canonisation process. Carlo Acutis was an Italian teenager who died of leukaemia in 2006. He was a very religious child who, among other acts of devotion, built a website cataloguing eucharistic miracles. After reading his story, I became obsessed with the arcane and bizarre process of canonisation. To this day, it involves exhumation, healing miracles, intrusive investigations of candidates' lives and often, as in Carlo's case, the public display of physical remains. Having grown up gay in Ireland, how do you feel about the Catholic Church? I'll always be angry about the history of the church in Ireland – the violence inflicted on children, women, queer people and many others. But there is a distinction between the institution and the faithful. In some ways, Ordinary Saints is a celebration of the power of faith, even as it criticises the church. How did the novel evolve over its various drafts? On my first draft, I got to 20,000 words then threw them out and started again. At the beginning of that second draft I found my narrator Jay's voice. From there, the story flowed pretty steadily. READ MORE The late Pope Francis crops up in Ordinary Saints. What did you make of him? I feel quite ambivalent. In many ways, Francis gave us a glimpse of what the Catholic Church could be – a church of the poor and the marginalised. But there always seemed to be a limit to his progressive ambition, particularly when it came to women's and LGBTQ+ rights. Do you have a favourite saint? I've always had a grá for Bríd. I appreciate her healthy disregard for authority. You were shortlisted for the Women's Prize Trust Discoveries Prize in 2022, and won the inaugural PFD Queer Fiction Prize. Did this help? Hugely. Writing a debut novel is daunting and the prizes gave me a confidence boost. They also helped me find a community of other writers. You won The Irish Times debating championship in 2010, as did your father, Eoin, in 1983. Sally Rooney made her name as a debater, too. Does it feed into your writing? Debating is great training for any career that requires compelling communication. But the whole point is to win arguments and take definitive positions. Fiction is different; it's about asking open questions and embracing uncertainty. You live in Edinburgh now. Does the distance help you write about home? I started Ordinary Saints during lockdown, when I couldn't travel home. That time gave me both a new clarity about Ireland and a sense of longing, both of which influenced the book. Like fellow author Michael Collins, you are an endurance athlete. Are there similarities with writing? Definitely. Writing and distance running are both about showing up every day and putting in the effort, whether you feel like it or not. Which projects are you working on? I've got a new novel in the works, but I'm very cagey about my works in progress! Have you ever made a literary pilgrimage? I've lived in three great literary cities, where you can go on mini-pilgrimages all the time. I remember spontaneously changing my cycle route home one evening because I wanted to see the street in London where Beckett's Murphy lived. What is the best writing advice you have heard? Focus on the sentence, the one you're writing right now. Who do you admire the most? The people of Palestine for their courage, humanity and perseverance. You are the supreme ruler for a day. Which law do you pass or abolish? I'd establish the necessary legal framework for trans people to live freely and in peace. Which current book, film and podcast would you recommend? Stag Dance by Torrey Peters; Conclave; and Critics at Large, a cultural podcast from the New Yorker. Which public event affected you most? I was only eight when the Good Friday Agreement was signed, but I vividly remember going to the Stations of the Cross that day and feeling the intensity of all the adults' emotions. What is the most beautiful book that you own? My great-grandfather, Séamas Ó Maoileoin, wrote a book called B'Fhiú an Braon Fola , published by Sairséal agus Dill, about his involvement in the War of Independence. I have a beautiful copy, which includes maps drawn by my grandfather, Ailbe. The best and worst things about where you live? Like Dublin, Edinburgh combines all the cultural attractions of the city with easy access to the mountains and the sea. But it is very dark for a lot of the year. What is your favourite quotation? The final passage of Middlemarch. '... the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.' Who is your favourite fictional character? Sally Seton in Mrs Dalloway . A book to make me laugh? Wild Geese by Soula Emmanuel. Hilarious, as well as insightful and moving. A book that might move me to tears? I most recently cried reading Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree, translated by Daisy Rockwell. Ordinary Saints is published by Manilla Press
Irish Times
06-05-2025
- General
- Irish Times
Holy Irish, partly French – Frank McNally on 800 years of St Laurence O'Toole
I'm indebted to several readers who, in response to my ruminations about 'full professors' last week, pointed out that there is at least one other career where that adjective is used. In the Army, they sometimes refer to 'full colonels' to avoid confusion with mere lieutenant colonels, and 'full generals' to differentiate from the lieutenant, major, and brigadier variety. Charles de Gaulle, Tim Dixon tells me as an aside, was only a brigadier general, despite being frequently promoted in casual usage. But speaking of France, a milestone being commemorated there this coming weekend suggests another vocation in which the f-word might be useful. READ MORE On Sunday (May 11th), ceremonies will mark 800 years since Archbishop Laurence O'Toole became only the second Irish person ever canonised. Yes, there had been countless Irish saints before him, including Patrick and Brigid and the myriad others who once made Ireland the land of saints and scholars. But those weren't full saints, or at least official ones. In earlier centuries, canonisation was by popular acclaim (a bit like internet polls now). Only in 1170, responding to some controversies, did the Vatican take the process under its control. What has Laurence O'Toole, aka Lorcan Ua Tuathail, got to do with France, I hear you ask? Well, although he was Archbishop of Dublin and had spent most of his life dealing with the complicated politics of Ireland before and after the Anglo-Norman invasion, he ended his days in Normandy. He had gone first to England in 1180, on a diplomatic mission to Henry II. Discovering that the king had left for France, O'Toole then followed him there. But en route, the archbishop was struck down with fever, and died within days of arrival at a place called Eu, in November 1180. From there on, as Jesse Harrington writes in the latest issue of History Ireland, 'Laurence's French afterlife was every bit as rich as his Irish life'. Local recognition of his sainthood followed rapidly. He was soon promoted to a better tomb in a bigger church. His carved, recumbent effigy was then added, one of the first of its kind in France and now of major importance to art historians. Devotees, meanwhile, made six formal attempts to have him canonised, a campaign to which Pope Honorius finally acceded in 1225, only 45 years after O'Toole's death. The Archbishop of Dublin thereby followed Malachy of Armagh, who had become Ireland's first official saint in 1190, also with French support. O'Toole's cult was such that the shrine at Eu credited him with 256 miracles in subsequent centuries. He has also earned the unusual distinction of a mention in Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time). Mind you, the author clearly struggled with the surname. During a discussion of placename etymologies and the many errors of interpretation by one supposed expert, Proust has a character saying: 'But his biggest blunders are due not so much to his ignorance as to his prejudices. However loyal a Frenchman one is, there is no need to fly in the face of the evidence and take Saint-Laurent en Bray to be the Roman priest, so famous at one time, when he is actually Saint Lawrence 'Toot, Archbishop of Dublin.' Oh well, that was close (ish). And Proust's familiarity with ''Toot's' ethnic origin, at least, justifies the claim by Harrington (a research fellow at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies and adviser to the octennial commemorations): 'As this year's celebration may show, for the last eight centuries Dublin's patron saint has arguably ... been better remembered in France than he has been in Ireland.' If most of O'Toole ended up in Normandy, his heart is still in Dublin – literally, in a reliquary at Christ Church Cathedral. It did, however, go missing from there for several years, after a strange theft in 2012. The person responsible is thought to have hidden in the cathedral overnight while prizing open the wood-and-iron box and walking out with its contents next day. Six years later, just as mysteriously, it was found undamaged in the Phoenix Park by gardaí. Reports suggested that, based on some bad luck, the thief decided it was cursed. It was not the first time O'Toole had been held hostage. As a child, he was temporarily handed over to his father's political rival, Diarmait MacMurchada, as a guarantee of peace. His harsh experience in captivity seems only to have encouraged a religious vocation, in which he was known for hair shirt-wearing ascetism. This reminds me of another reader's response to the 'full' debate. George Harding wrote to say he was recently asked by a friend (Professor Des McHale) to come up with some Cork slang words not included in Sean Beecher's 1985 dictionary of the genre. My suggestion that the term 'full professor' evoked 'an academic who has eaten too much' reminded George that in Cork, 'full' also means drunk (aka 'langers'). If Laurence O'Toole can be called a full saint, it was never in either of those senses. He abstained from meat, ate bread mixed with ashes, and fasted on Fridays. He drank in company but only to be sociable, and so diluted his wine that it was 'little more than tinted water'.
