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Episode Description
With the new September 7 date set for Blessed Carlo Acutis’ canonization, Sabrina Ferrisi joins with insider knowledge about the saint’s miracles, reflections from his mother about her soon-to-be-saint son, and why this first millennial saint has so much to teach us in this digital age.
We also discuss the recent Vita Institute seminar and the vital work of the pro-life movement in a post-Dobbs world. The institute prepares participants to be highly effective in their advocacy for the unborn and provides the opportunity to study policy fundamentals of life issues with some of the most high profile pro-life experts in the world.
Msgr. Roger Landry also shares exciting news about the 100th anniversary of the North American Martyrs’ canonization ahead of the pilgrimage in Auriesville. Also known as the Canadian Martyrs, these Jesuit missionaries worked in North America during the 17th century and died for their faith. The day included a Eucharistic procession, a talk on the North American Martyrs and Christian heroism, Mass, veneration of relics, and more.
Bios
Sabrina Ferrisi is an author and journalist who has covered Catholic journalism for more than 20 years. Beginning in 2000, she worked as a journalist covering the Holy See in Rome for American Catholic newspapers such as Our Sunday Visitor, the National Catholic Register and Catholic World Report. She covered the last four years of Pope John Paul II’s papacy, and started her own Italian radio show in 2000, “Radio Maria,” commentating on Vatican news. She served as senior staff writer for Legatus magazine, and as a freelance writer for the Register and Aleteia. Her latest book, Blessed Carlo Acutis: The Amazing Discovery of a Teenager in Heaven (Holy Heroes) was published in 2022. Sabrina lives in New York with her husband and five children.
Monsignor Roger Landry is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts. He writes for numerous publications, speaks on radio and TV, and is the author of the book, Plan of Life: Habits to Help You Grow Closer to God. A graduate of Harvard and the Pontifical North American College in Rome, he served as Attaché to the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations in New York. Father Landry traversed the full 1500-mile Eucharist Pilgrimage in 2024 and joined the historic Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis, an event which coincided with his 25th year in the priesthood. In 2024, he was appointed the new National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the USA by Pope Francis.
The following transcript is machine generated.
Episode 322 Transcript
| Ashley | Welcome to Conversations with Consequences on EWTN, where you I'm your host is Ashley McGuire. And I'm joined by my wonderful TV colleagues, Mary Fiorito and Lisa Neat, who are both part of a great annual event that takes place at Notre Dame every summer, the Theater Institute. And since you were both there presenting and taking part in some of the events, we thought we'd learn more from you and I'm so glad to have you both here on the show today. |
| Mary | Well, thank you for having us. |
| Lisa | Yeah, good to be here with you guys. |
| Ashley | So, Mary, I know you both presented, but let's start with you. Tell us maybe. |
| Mary | First. |
| Ashley | Take a step back and and tell us about the Media Institute. What is it and why is it considered the sort of premiere leadership and educational training program for pro-lifers? |
| Mary | So the Vita Institute is a program of the De Nicholas Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame, and it is a brainchild of the center and its former director, Carter Sneed, that brings together not only leadership of different pro-life organizations, but also those who are really kind of the rank and file pro-lifers who are doing the kind of ministry work or really granular sort of grassroots work who don't often get to interact with people who are in pro-life leadership but have a lot to offer and a lot to share about, you know, what's what's going on in the movement. So it's a competitive process to attend the institute. You have to apply for it a couple of months in advance. And the center strives to get a really diverse group of people together. So you'll have people who work in state legislatures or you'll have people who are medical doctors. You'll have people who do direct service to women in pregnancy centers. The pro-life movement is really, really diverse and really broad. And this is one time of the year when you'll get people from really every walk in the pro-life movement together on Notre Dame's beautiful campus during the summer where they can, you know, free of charge. They stay in one of the dorms, They eat in the cafeterias for the university, which are actually quite lovely. They get to spend time with other pro-life leaders and really get to meet people, but then also get to learn from experts in the pro-life movement. |
| Lisa | I think it's that access to people who maybe are don't you know, who come who are presenting in a field that's not that the students own like an embryologist or, you know, a lawyer or. |
| Mary | Professor of law or. |
| Lisa | Law or. |
| Mary | A neonatologist. |
| Lisa | The lawyer assistant, the deputy. |
| Mary | Attorney general. |
| Lisa | Eternal Journal. Thank you, Mary. |
| Mary | Yes. yeah. A very, very impressive roster of people, for sure. And like I. |
| Lisa | Said, your. |
| Mary | Point is so good. You know, back in the day when I first started in pro-life, this is going back 30 years. Father Benedict Rochelle and another Catholic priest who was from a diocese in Trenton, New Jersey, used to have an annual retreat for people and pro-life leadership. And it was at a retreat house. And because they felt and discerned that really people who work in pro-life have particular spiritual, you know, struggles or concerns or just crosses that they have to bear in the work and that it would be good to get everybody together once a year. And it wasn't the competitive sort of academic tone that the Nicholas Center event has, but it did bring people together. I think, you know, that's probably where I met half of the people in the pro-life movement would be at those retreats. And once both of those men passed away, no one picked up the ball on that until the day Nicholas Center did about 15 years ago. So it's not just a way to learn, but it really is a way. Networking is such an overused adjective, to be honest, but it really is networking. And then just being able to, you know, have camaraderie and support from other people who do similar work, but perhaps, you know, in different venues. |
| Lisa | Yeah. And really easily available availability of daily mass and confession. It's all right there on campus. |
| Mary | Yeah. |
| Lisa | Building the schedule. Yeah. |
| Ashley | Yeah. I never thought about that before. The fact that it really does bring together rank and file, as you say, and leadership and how important that is for them to be in communication with each other because the, you know, rank and file is, you know, not the right word. They're the true the Marines, if you will, of the movement, but they're the ones often having a much more face to face interaction, often on the very front lines working in pregnancy centers. |
| Mary | There's sidewalk counseling. |
| Ashley | Right there, seeing and hearing directly from the women in crisis. You know what? They have their fingers really on the pulse and and and the leadership of the movement needs to have a good understanding of that. And I'm blessed to have been able to attend the Vera Institute many years ago, just for a few days. But I really did get a taste of what you were describing, which is a real diversity and range of presenters topics I had never heard any discussion about and I saw to this day, remember some of those talks very vividly. In fact, I remember one of the talks being about the need that women have for more support from their partner and how it was. The number was staggering. It was over 80%, maybe over 90% of women said something to the effect of if all the dad, the father of the baby had said was, I'll support you, they would have had the baby. And just how important that is and how what a big factor that is in driving women. So so both of you presented. Mary, could you start by telling us about your talk? |
| Mary | So actually what you just said, is it a beautiful segway into what I spoke about? Because I talked about something called the Turn Away study, and I presented that with Dr. Monique Sharobeem Horst, who is an OBGYN, formerly affiliated with Duke University's Medical Center, but now is a fellow at the DE Nicholas Center but also works at Saint Joseph's Hospital in South Bend delivering babies. She is a woman of color and has a special sort of expertise in maternal mortality, particularly in communities of color and most specifically the black community, because that is the community that she hails from. So the turn away study we we tackled not because we think it's a particularly good study, it's actually not, but it gets a lot of media attention. It is the work of a sociologist, a Ph.D. sociologist named Dr. Diane Diana Green. FOSTER and she got an $800,000, no strings attached MacArthur genius grant to talk to a thousand women over the course of five years. And you could break them down basically into three different groups women who wanted to get an abortion and had the funds and the accessibility of a nearby abortion clinic to do so. Women who wanted to get an abortion, but because they couldn't get the money together or transportation or some other obstacle that kept them from getting the abortion earlier on instead had a later abortion that they would have had earlier if they'd been able to. And then finally, a third group that they call the turn of ways. And that's where the name of the study comes from. So women who wanted to get an abortion, but for whatever reason, by the time they got the money together, the abortion clinic in their state only did them to 26 weeks, for example, or the baby's father, you know, mysteriously showed up and said, listen, I'll help you, or she was able to work something out with her employer, but for whatever reason, changed her mind or was turned away from the clinic with kind of a special focus on these women who really wanted abortions and were turned away. So it's it's interesting to see the way in which women's, you know, thoughts and feelings about their abortion progresses. So after the first year, the turn a ways many of them were suffering from anxiety and depression. Many of them were having financial difficulties because, you know, none of the problems that are present at the time of a woman's abortion decision, none of them are solved by the abortion. Right. And none of them are solved by having the baby, which is why I always say it's a permanent solution to a temporary problem. But when you look at the same women five years out, and here's the key takeaway, and I think something that pro-lifers really need to understand thoroughly, 96% of those women said, I'm glad I didn't have the abortion, that I thought, wow, that nine days they loved their child, they had bonded with their child. I you know, in my PowerPoint, I use quotes from some of the women once saying, I look at my son and I think, my God, he's so beautiful. I can't bear to think about what I almost did. So, you know, But it's awful. Yeah. It challenges us as a pro-life community, though. I would say, because, you know, back and back in the day, there was a book called Real Choices, written by a woman named Frederica MATTHEWS Green, who was very involved. She got kicked out of the national organization for Women because of her pro-life views and started along with a couple of other women, a group called Feminists for Life. And she did a rather extensive study called Real Choices that she turned into a book where she went basically coast to coast ten different big cities and talked to about a dozen women in each city and started kind of a small group setting, asking them what were the reasons that led to your abortion. She did focused exclusively on post abortive women. And what did you need that you didn't have? That if you'd had it, you wouldn't have had the abortion. What what what was really the factor that made that decision? And actually, it goes back to your point from what you heard at the Vita Institute a few years ago, the number one reason and this was more important than financial considerations, this was more important than health issues. Her job, the number one reason cited by women, was there was not one person in my life who said they would walk with me through that pregnancy. Not the baby's father, not my parents, not my college roommate. Nobody said, Listen, if you want to have this baby, I will help you. I'll go to the doctor with you. I'll go to the birth with you. I'll help you. I'll babysit. Not one person in a woman's life, you know, said to her, You can do this. You don't have to choose this if you don't want to. And then it really like for me, just as a pro-lifer and as a Catholic mother, I feel very convicted by that. You know, Mother Teresa always said about US views of air abortion law, your your United States, who are very wealthy materially, but you're very impoverished spiritually because you you lack love. You live that love for the other. |
| Lisa | That's a real I mean, yeah, like you say, a challenge to pro-lifers, a call to action. But it's also got to be a real affirmation for the people attending to hear that, to be like, Wow, what we're doing matters. I need to keep doing this, especially like in a post UPS world, whereas before, you know, the the activism and what it took to overcome those laws and support women in a in a place in a state in the United States when abortion was absolutely so readily available, some people might think, well, we want we want and. |
| Mary | Well right. |
| Lisa | You know, and the work is still to be done. And I think that example right there is exactly what they need to hear in terms of what needs to be done. They need to walk with these mothers. |
| Mary | Well, one of Fredricka, is quotes from her book that got picked up by all the abortion advocates, by the head of Planned Parenthood at the time. And, you know, Patricia Ireland, who was a very pro-abortion member of Congress, she said, you know what she learned through her research in her writing, Women don't want an abortion like they want a Pausch or an ice cream cone. You want an abortion like an animal whose leg is caught in a trap and you're ready to chew it off. That's that was kind of the raw emotion. And they they completely distorted what she said there, you know, and made fun of it almost, you know. But but it's a very, very powerful statement that was reflected in so many of the women. You know, many of them obviously carrying the wounds of their abortion with them that that shared with her. So it's it's still available in print. You can get real choices. But I have long advocated for having a rebrand. A real choice is 2.0 because the landscape is so different, as you mentioned, Leigh, and this is one of the, you know, just only a couple of veto institutes that we've had that have been post jobs. But now we have a post jobs world and we have a lot of different state laws and we need to know. And it would or at least it would be very helpful to my mind to know, are women still choosing abortion primarily for that reason that they decided 30 years ago, or is it different now? Are they choosing it for different reasons? |
| Lisa | I just had one follow up question for Mary, if it's okay, Mary, what you've been involved with the institute from your one year to. |
| Mary | Probably like year three. |
| Lisa | You're okay because. |
| Mary | It used to be two weeks, it used to be two. It was hard. |
| Lisa | To recruit people to come for two. |
| Mary | Weeks. And so that's why I wasn't involved until it went down to a one week schedule. But then after that, I've been every year. |
| Lisa | And so what are some of the other topics you've talked about over the years? |
| Mary | so, you know, it's always one of my favorites is Dr. Colleen Malloy, who was a neonatologist at the very prestigious Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago. She did not present this year, but she has many other years. And just to hear her talk about the shift in viability and how young now we can treat children who are born early and things like fetal pain. And I mean, for example, a lot of people remember that Jackie Kennedy, two months before her husband was assassinated, President Kennedy was assassinated, had a baby prematurely. His name was Patrick. He was born at 34 and a half weeks. And he died. He died of premature death because his lungs weren't completely developed. And he had the best doctors in the world. He was the son of the president of the United States, and he died. Since that time, something called surfactant has been introduced into neonatal care. And now, by comparison, I have a nephew who was born at 22 weeks, zero days, and he is now eight years old. So you see that the science, if for lack of a better word, that the Supreme Court was working with when they decided Roe has completely changed, completely changed. And in this post APS world, you know, we were able to meet with Dr. Malloy even though she didn't present while we were there that week. And she was telling me she's treating 21 week years now at Lurie Children's Hospital. So that to me just the miracle of how we can treat these babies at younger and younger ages, but also how much more we know about the pain that is present at younger and younger ages. And Dr. Malloy has speculated it's probably in the 12 to 14 week range of gestational development. Yeah. |
| Ashley | Lee, you also spoke and and you have a unique perspective on the Vera Institute because you've been a part of it in different ways for so many years. Tell us first what you your topic was about and then you know what how you feel like the program has changed and shifted as, you know, the cultural and and legal realities have changed really dramatically, especially in the last few years now. |
| Lisa | Well, I mostly have been sort of on the home front support staff. I did speak, I think, for the first time, maybe, maybe ten years ago, long time ago. And then, you know, I was busy manning the home front because my husband, Carter Snead, used to be the the beta chief as well as director of the Center for Ethics and Culture. And so he gives and even given this year, Mary, you can confirm he gave me four talks. |
| Mary | So at least at least he was you know, it really was. And you're being so modest. I know, because this is your husband, but I if you would allow me to brag on him, it was just something that he has taken. Something that was two weeks was always good from the outset, but then condensed it. And because he's so connected in so many different ways to different people in the pro-life movement and he's such a persuasive human being, he has just been able to bring an expertise that most people would never dream of being able to hear speak in person, much less meet them afterwards and ask them questions. So really, so much credit goes to your husband for for making this institute what it is. Yeah. |
| Lisa | Thanks, Mary. I'll pass that along to him. I guess he doesn't listen to the episode. So this year and last year and I think the year before, I've been on differently organized panels. I think last year Carter and I did one together, but I always talk about adoption. And this year the theme for our panel was to talk about how to support adoptive families in your community. And there were three of us on a panel, you know, with just about 20 minutes each to speak. And so I thought after talking to the other panelists about the things that they were going to address, I thought I would just do like a nuts and bolts talk about how adoption works, especially the kind of adoptions that I've done, private newborn adoption in the United States, just because I think a lot of if you haven't done it, you might not know or you don't know someone who hasn't done it, you might not know. And it's a lot of sort of just quotidian things, but it's it's exactly what, you know, what happens. And so when someone in your community brings a baby home, it's nice to sort of know how that baby got there without and then without asking them, having to ask a lot of intrusive questions. And so I did go into sort of the what not to ask what not to say, because I do think some people and it's it's just it's almost always from a just a place of goodwill can ask questions as that of adoptive families that they wouldn't ask sort of the equivalent questions of two families who have produced, you know, biological children. Details of the conception of their baby, you know, their pregnancy, different symptoms. It's you know, it's it's it's your personal information. And especially in the case of adoption, it's the child's private information. And as their parent, you really do have to be the guardian of that, even when they're very small until they're ready to sort of take it on themselves. And then I went on it. I talked about some basic vocabulary that's changed. A lot of it's some of it's outdated that people still hang on to, some of it's pejorative. And I also talked about sort of the soft stigma, this sort of unconscious bias people might have around adoption that they don't even realize it. And I told a story when my first Orlando was very young. We were somewhere and someone had asked me a stranger had asked me a question about myself with a baby, but I don't even know what the question was. But I wasn't offended. But I was just like, well, he's adopted, or I adopted him. And their first response was, I'm sorry. |
| Mary | Well. |
| Lisa | And I was like, What? What? And then, you know, I just sort of looked at my baby, my son, and then got my act together and just said, well, I'm not, you know, and the conversation was over. But I think it's one of those things, yeah, it's still a little bit present. Even in popular culture that's starting to do a better job at celebrating the gifts of adoption. So that's kind of what I talked about. It was short and sweet, but hopefully, you know, it opened people's eyes to what they could. What Honestly, it's not you don't have to promote adoption or encourage it or, you know, I think just, you know, support the families who it affects in your community. |
| Mary | Well, I was for one was so grateful. And you and I have been friends for many years, but still, I feel like I learn something new about how I might have unconscious statements that I made, not knowing or realizing that they can be very hurtful to a family who's formed by adoption. |
| Lisa | But, you know, I think that those are the same mistakes that most people made before they entered into adoption themselves. |
| Mary | Right. |
| Lisa | And so sure, for the most part is understanding. But I think to you know, to get people, you know, from the start, you know, if we can just create a new vocabulary around it and so that other terms aren't even used anymore, just, you know, the way we say all kinds of things Now, that. |
| Mary | Or jokes we might make right, You. |
| Lisa | Know, might make. |
| Mary | Yeah. Like just. |
| Lisa | Little things. Yeah. Like I talked about how people, you know, it's still portrayed in movies and TV that siblings will trick another sibling into thinking they're adopted. And that's supposed to be a mean trick, You know, I mean, there's obviously lots of layers to that, but that same sort of thing. Yeah. So I think just like I mean, it was it was it was it turned out a little bit more negative than I had wanted it to be, But hopefully it'll have positive results. |
| Mary | I don't think it was negative. |
| Lisa | Good. good. Well, maybe just being self-critical. |
| Mary | not at all. It but it was eye opening. It was a very, you know, honest emotional talk. But I think that's necessary because I really you know, you could see a lot of people's wheels turning going, boy, I've said stuff like that before. And I never realized that would be hurtful, you know? Yeah. And, you know, we have another mutual friend who has an adopted son. And I remember her telling me one time that, you know, someone said, Do you ever see your son's real mother? And she said, No, I am his real mother. I'm his mother. And not just legally, but I'm his mother and, you know, every other way, but. |
| Lisa | Know we don't want to have to do that. We don't that's. |
| Mary | Not, you know. |
| Lisa | And so it's kind of like if you can get there, like, I don't know, horse before the cart, I don't think that's the right thing. But you know what I'm saying? Like beat beat them to the punch so that they can just prevent it. |
| Mary | Right? I mean, I Yeah, go ahead. Sorry. |
| Ashley | Actually, I remember having a conversation with good friends of ours who adopted and, you know, I'm a lifelong pro-lifer. I'm super pro adoption. My husband and I have discussed potentially adopting one day. And I said something like, some somebody gave up her baby for adoption. And this friend just he was like placed placed the baby. And I was like, but I appreciate the correction. You know, it's it's so I think that's really important topic. You know, what were some of the kind of difficult or interesting conversations, maybe unexpected or or things that came up in the duration of the program? |
| Mary | Well, I think, you know, we're looking at a legal landscape right now that's very complicated. So we had a couple of very high level lectures from a professor at Harvard from, of course, his husband, Carter, and his colleague, Sharif Girgis, both who teach at Notre Dame's law schools. Because we've seen now the the battle, if you will, shift from a national focus on Roe versus Wade overturn to state by state. Right. And so we're seeing 50 different issues depending on the state that you're from and kind of wildly different abortion laws. But some of them, the bright spots I felt we we always hear from Dr. Michael Nu, who is who has a Ph.D. in political theory and statistics from Stanford and so is very knowledgeable and surveys and personal opinion polls, all those sorts of things. But breaking down new polling, that's quite reputable, showing that there's been an actual increase in pro-life sentiment, particularly among young people. So that was very encouraging. And the discouraging side and I don't know if you were present for these particular conversations, a lot about the abortion pill and about its availability, about its dangers, which are significant and can really, really harm women long term. They're also about 60% from what we know, the best kind of knowledge that we have right now in terms of abortion numbers, because not every state has to report their abortion numbers to the CDC and many don't, including states that are very large in terms of population like Illinois and California. So we don't have really firm numbers on that. But it does appear that about 60% of abortions are now chemical abortions and they're not surgical abortions anymore. So that is not only different medically, but it also is different in terms of post-abortion aftermath, because when you have the abortion pill, rather than there being the doctor who performs the abortion on the woman, the woman is the moral agent. She's taking the abortion pill herself. So abortion aftermath, what we used to call post-abortion syndrome, that's very different when you had a lot more of an active role in it as the person having the abortion rather than an abortion provider doing it to you. So all sorts of new complications because of that, both spiritually and physically. But again, nothing that I think as a group we can't solve or at least, you know, support each other in solving. And that's that's what's so valuable about something like the V to institute. Yeah. |
| Lisa | You know, it reminds me of an article I just recently read by Olga Kazan in The Atlantic, and she was talking about a number of things about the sort of donate a list thing that's been in the news a lot in the in trying to encourage, you know, higher birthrates among women. And she interviewed a lot of popular people in the pro-life movement who are famously working moms. They travel a lot, people like Kristen Hawkins. And they were they were quoted in the article. But one of the statistics she gave, Olga Kazan, was that there had been an increase in abortions performed and she said performed as we may think. What I understood was that the increase was in medical, you know, the abortion pill. And so this agency I mean, I think we're always it's always a little bit of a war of semantics, right, between the pro-abortion side and the pro-life side. But it was it was interesting to me that she used the word performed without distinguishing, like you just did between physician or, you know, whoever and the woman herself. And. |
| Ashley | Well, well, we're out of time. I feel like we could talk about this for hours. And I feel like we have at times the SAT and talked about this topic for hours, were all passionate about it. And what a gift for the V to institute to have both of you there to present. And what a gift to the movement the Vera Institute is to bring together, as you put it, so well, Mary, the the different facets of a very multifaceted movement and at such an important time in the very beginning of this post Dobbs era, where there's, you know, as we've said so many times, our work really is only just beginning or it's beginning a new phase. So thank you so much, both of you, for sharing your experience and to find out where can people find out more about the Vera Institute? |
| Lisa | Lee on the center at the Nicholas Center for Ethics and Culture website. And if you sign up for their regular newsletters, you'll be, you know, you'll have access to the time and dates of the next V to institute and when the deadline is to apply. |
| Ashley | Wonderful. Well, thank you so much both. So great to chat with you today. |
| Mary | Ashley Thank you. Ashley. |
| Mary/Ashley | Welcome back to Conversations with Consequences on EWTN Radio. I'm your host, Mary Fiorito. And I'm Ashley McGuire. Well, we had some exciting news last week about Carlo Acutis new canonization date, something we've been waiting on for a while. And here to discuss, the first millennial saint is Catholic author and writer Sabrina Fabrizi. Welcome back to the show, Sabrina. |
| Sabrina Farizi | Thank you. Happy to be. |
| Mary/Ashley | Here. So this has been quite the roller coaster experience, hasn't it? Carlos's canonization was scheduled during the Jubilee for teenagers, but then, sadly, that weekend became the funeral, the funeral of Pope Francis. And so now, as of last week, we know that the first born U.S. pope who is from Chicago, where I am from, will canonize the first millennial saint in September. Tell us, how are you, how excited are you for this? |
| Sabrina Farizi | I'm super excited. You know, I've been covering the church for 25 years and I've never heard of a canonization being rescheduled. Maybe it's happened, but I can't remember in the last 25 years, and not only Carlos, but Pierre George of Frascati has been scheduled for this new date in September. So God willing, it will happen. And no more rescheduling. But the faithful are very happy around the world. This has been a long time in the though. |
| Mary/Ashley | Well, actually, and I had the privilege of being in Rome shortly after the funeral for the conclave and so many people with Carlos Acutis T-shirts on or, you know, posters of him in the stores along the Villa Borgo, though. So that was there's certainly is tremendous enthusiasm about this canonization. What what do you think it is about him that resonates with so many people? |
| Sabrina Farizi | I think there are two things. First of all, he lived in our times. He lived surrounded by technology. He had a laptop. He had a cell phone. He had a PlayStation. Apparently. So I think that teenagers especially can relate to him. But even adults, we can relate to him because he lived with the things that we have today. And he learned how to live as a saint despite all this stuff. And even with it, he he learned how to use it as a Catholic to evangelize. So he's just really relatable. |
| Mary/Ashley | I've heard that he had what he called a kit for becoming a saint. Is that true? And what was in the kit? I need that kit for. |
| Sabrina Farizi | So basically, Carlo was a catechist. His mother was telling me for about 4 to 5 years in his parish. He was like an assistant teacher teaching the kids confirmation to get them ready for confirmation. So he came up with this kit and he would teach this to his class. Can you imagine if you could say, Carlo was your CD teacher? I mean, amazing. So the kid had eight points. So and they're all really good for all of us. So the first is we all have to desire holiness. We have to desire to become a saint. And if we don't have that desire, he said, you should pray for it. And that is a really good idea. Like, Lord, give me that desire to be holy. The second one is to try to go to daily Mass. And, you know, he lived in Italy. There's churches on every corner. He's in Milan. It might, you know, do your best. If you can go to daily Mass, then go daily rosary. His mother spoke in Saint Patrick's Cathedral last month and she said, you know, not everyone can go to daily mass for whatever reason. You might live in an area you don't have a church near you, but you can see the rosary every day. That is something that we can all do. Then he would say, Try to read a little bit of the Bible every day, a few minutes, maybe 5 to 10 minutes. Read, read the Bible. He did Eucharistic adoration every day, either before or after Mass. He would stay ten or 15 minutes. And, you know, this is something he said that we should all try to do this if we can. He went to Confession weekly and so he said, if you can go to confession weekly, if you can't go every week, try to go once a month, but try to make it a regular thing. He made sacrifices, so he was very concerned about people who had no one praying for them. So he would make sacrifices in preparation for sin and for the conversion of sinners. So, for example, he loved snacks like all of us do, and he would give up having a second piece of pie or give up having even one piece of pie. And he would offer that up for sinners. He was constantly making sacrifices for others. And the last thing number eight was ask your guardian angel to help you make your guardian angel your best friend. So he was always praying to his guardian angel. So this was his kit with the eight points. |
| Mary/Ashley | And Sabrina, you mentioned his mother. Yes. And I know that you've spoken with her. What have you learned about Carlos through his mother? |
| Sabrina Farizi | gosh. I've interviewed her many times. So on one hand, I learned that he was a normal kid. He had a lot of friends. He did all the normal things that Italian kids do and teenagers everywhere. He had dogs and cats. He loved to play with his pets. He did a lot of sports. But he also had this intense spiritual side. And it was a spiritual side that didn't come from them. It wasn't from Antonia and her husband, Andrea, because they were not practicing Catholics. When he was born, he just received a special grace. And she said, you know, sometimes in the life of the church, there are people who are given a special grace from God. And she believes Carlo was one of them and he led them back to church. So, you know, this doesn't happen all the time, but in their family it did. At a very young age, he became very interested in matters of faith. He would ask questions. He wanted to go into churches all the time when they were walking. And this made a huge impression on Antonia and Andrea. And little by little, I mean they really had the humility to let themselves be led back into the church by him. So I interviewed her actually last week, and she told me something new that I didn't know that before he died, he had been reading a book about young saints, and he was actually interested, too. He wanted to create an exhibit on young Saints. He never got a chance to do it. We know that he created an exhibit which became a website, which was his Web site on Eucharistic Miracles. So anyway, I just learned that he was very interested in young Saints. He was a big fan of Pierre George of society, who was going to be canonized on the same day as him. So that's also incredible. I didn't know that. So he was an amazing kid. He was an amazing kid. And I feel like he's my nephew in heaven that I prayed all the time now. |
| Mary/Ashley | Do does the family have other children? Did Carlo have siblings? |
| Sabrina Farizi | So this is an interesting question. When he was alive, his mom and dad couldn't seem to have other kids. They tried. It didn't happen. So he was an only child. But after he died in 2006, his mother, you know, was thinking, well, we can have kids. Maybe we'll adopt. So she and her husband started that whole process to adopt, which in Italy takes like 4 to 5 years. It's terrible. I have my brother in law and sister in law live in Milano. They adopted it, took them about four years. So she was in the process of adopting when she had a dream with Carlo, and he said to her, You are going to become a mother again. And shortly after that dream, she discovered that she was expecting. And then she discovered that she was expecting twins. |
| Mary/Ashley | Well. |
| Sabrina Farizi | Had twins four years to the day on the anniversary of Carlo's death. They were born four years to the day, and they are now almost 15 French. And make it. |
| Mary/Ashley | That's amazing. And it sounds like a miracle. Is that I mean, is that one of his miracles or is it an unofficial. |
| Sabrina Farizi | Yes. Yes, she thinks it is. I mean, I think she was well into her forties when she had the twins. So that it. Awful thing. |
| Mary/Ashley | And what are their names, Sabrina? Are they boys or girls or. |
| Sabrina Farizi | It's a it's a boy and a girl. Francesca and Michael. |
| Mary/Ashley | Tell us about some of the other miracles. My understanding is that one of them was seven years to the day after his death, and that that was the one that ultimately resulted in his beatification. But tell us about his miracle work. |
| Sabrina Farizi | So. Well, one thing, Antonia told me is that they get emails every day on the official Carlo, this website of miracles, of medical miracles with documentation. She says, We hear about miracles all the time. The miracle that led to his beatification was a little boy in Brazil named Matteo Viana. And at the time he was four years old. This was 2013. And he had this this anomaly with his pancreas where it was malformed and it caused him to vomit every day. He couldn't really eat solid food. So it was horrible. His parents had been taking him to doctors, and the doctors said, Well, we could do a surgery, but the surgery is very dangerous and he could die. So basically the parents were like, you know, what do we do? Then they're their parish priest named Father Tenorio had recently come back from Assisi. Somehow, I think he had met the family, the Acutis family, and they gave him a relic, a second class relic of, I guess, a piece of cloth that had touched Carlo's body before he died. And so Father Tenorio said, let's have a nine day novena to Carlo in the parish. The parents of Matteo's brought him in and they had to carry him. He could barely walk because he was so weak. And they brought him up to the altar. And the father, Father Tenorio, said, What would what would you like to pray for? And he says, I want to pray to stop vomiting. So that same day, apparently, he went home and he felt well and he said, Mom and dad, I want to eat something solid. I don't know what they gave him, but the parents were like, really nervous. They're like, Are you sure? And he said, Yeah, I want to. I want to try. So he did, and he didn't vomit. And this happened every day for the next few days. And the parents finally said, All right, we've got to see what's going on. They brought him back to the doctors. They did an MRI and discovered that the pancreas was perfectly formed. It perfectly formed pancreas and very different from the pancreas they had seen before with the MRI's. So you could see the before and after. And he's fine now. He's a perfectly healthy Brazilian boy. Wow. Yeah. |
| Mary/Ashley | Well, yeah, I know he's he's an intercessor for many things. And one of them of course, I think is for parents who have young people who are away from the church and now of course, we're seeing so much excitement over our new Holy Father Pope Leo the 14th. And we just had a big mass here in Chicago last weekend at at Sox Park, what they call now rate field and so many younger boys and men there. I think the fact that the Holy Father is a baseball fan, an American baseball fan, has been very popular, but also he seems to at the weekly audiences, be connecting with little babies and young people and people throwing him stuffed animals. Do you do you see that this moment with the first Saints, you know, he's going to canonized these these two young men? What kind of moment is this for the younger American church? |
| Sabrina Farizi | I think this has been a huge injection of energy because I agree with you. I think everyone is so excited that we have an American pope. We never thought this would happen. And I see this in my parish. Everyone's so excited. Even people who are not practicing Catholics are like talking to me and being like, Wow, I really like this new pope. So I think it's a great moment and I think it's always, you know, it's very sad that Carlo died young. It's tremendously sad and sad that poor George of society died young. But these are two really good examples of good looking, wonderful, fun young saints that they can be good role models. And you're right, I do think that a lot of teenagers are very interested in these, too. I was in Rome in April as well for the canonization of Carlo and the funeral. And everywhere I looked, I saw teenagers and they were all wearing t shirts with the face of Carlo. So I think this is a great moment and I pray and hope that many young people will give faith another chance and come back if they've fallen away. Absolutely. |
| Mary/Ashley | Well, one of the things that strikes me about Carlo is what a kind of just masculine guy he is, you know? |
| Sabrina Farizi | Yes. |
| Mary/Ashley | Excuse me. The prayer card that we have for him on our refrigerator. He's just this, like, cool, cool cat. Yeah. And I mean, do you think he resonates especially with men? Because, you know, just always talking about this crisis of masculinity and he just seemed like a guy. |
| Sabrina Farizi | He was. One thing I know for a fact is that he had a lot of friends that he wasn't he wasn't like a loner sitting in the corner who just happened to be a faithful Catholic, but who, you know, couldn't resonate with anyone. I think that he was friends with everyone in his high school. He had a lot of friends coming over and everyone liked him. And even though he was known as the religious kid, they and not everyone in the high school was practicing the faith. They respected him. So I think that's really cool. The other thing that's cool is that he was into tech and we are now in a time where being into tech is very cool. Believe it or not, I actually met someone that went to grammar school with him by chance a month ago here in New York City. It was crazy. And he was telling me that Carlo, you know, they would go to his house and play video games with him and then play with the dogs. And he said, like, if you had something that was broken like a Gameboy or some sort of electronic thing, he could actually fix it. He really was a prodigy when it came to tech. And I think that that's really cool because a lot of young people are into tech now. I mean, I'm old, but my, you know, my kids, they whenever I have a computer problem, I have to ask them for help. And so this is something that really resonates with them. He is going to be the first can. And I saying, who has programed, Who's created his own website? I mean, he really was a programmer and then something new. And I think it's it's wonderful. It's what you. |
| Mary/Ashley | Brought. Yeah. And it's so interesting that he was so up to date and up to speed on all these new technological advances and could explain them to others. Yet at the same time, he's very much known for something that's sort of old school, which is Eucharistic adoration. So which was something he wanted to promote. So you wonder if perhaps his example is showing us the goods that can come out of this technology that we can all have now in use. But at the same token, we shouldn't keep that away. Let that keep us away from our Lord. |
| Sabrina Farizi | I agree with you. And, you know, going back to when he was a catechist, one of the things that would upset him is he realized that when he was teaching the kids about the Eucharist, that they were not excited. And so when he he came up with this idea to do a Eucharistic Miracles exhibit, and then from that he made a website because he wanted to get excitement about the Eucharist. So he's doing something very old school, he's promoting Eucharistic adoration, but he's doing it with something really new, which is a website. And when I looked at the website, I don't know if either of you have perused this website. It's very well done, it's very thorough. And I was shocked. I'm like, You mean there was never a website on Eucharistic miracles and no, there hadn't been. Not until Carlo. |
| Mary/Ashley | So and that exhibits traveling. We had it at my parish in fact. |
| Sabrina Farizi | Right. |
| Mary/Ashley | And it's attracting a lot of people to come and see it. |
| Sabrina Farizi | Yeah. No, Antonia told me that it's, it's been on five continents and in thousands of parishes and even during his website, it had already started travel During his lifetime. The website was traveling where you can download these panels of the Eucharistic miracles. And we did it in our parish and it was wonderful. It was a great success. So he was quite, you know, quite a successful kid. I mean, he died in his October of his sophomore year in high school. Just how young he was. It wasn't like he was a senior about to go to college. He was he was really young. |
| Mary/Ashley | Well, tell us a little bit about his death. What did he pass away from? |
| Sabrina Farizi | So basically, he died from this kind of very strong form of leukemia. And basically he had been very healthy up until then. The summer before he died, he went on summer vacation with his parents. Everything was fine. He never had a health problem other than a cold. And then in October of his sophomore year, he came down with a fever and his mom and dad said, it's the flu. It's going around Milano. So they weren't really worried. But then I think there was a day where he literally couldn't get out of bed, He couldn't stand. And they they got scared. So then they they sent him they brought him to this hospital in Milan and they started doing blood work. And when they got the diagnosis, they realized he had the worst form of leukemia that you can have and that it was terminal. There was nothing that could be done. Antonia has told me, or she I think I heard her speak about this, that this kind of leukemia today can be cured. But in 2006, it couldn't be. And so he died three days after the diagnosis. So it was very. |
| Mary/Ashley | My goodness. wow. I did not know that. |
| Sabrina Farizi | Yeah, Terrible. Terrible. |
| Mary/Ashley | Did he have any final words that his parents speak of now? |
| Sabrina Farizi | Yes. So while he was in the hospital, he told his mom that he was offering up all of his sufferings for the pope and the church. And then he told his mom, Mom, I'd like to come home with you, but I know I won't be able to. But don't worry. I'm going to give you signs that I'm in heaven. And and another thing is, after he died, she woke up. This is in her book. She was at home and she woke up one morning and heard the word testament in her mind. And she said, What is that? So she went to Carlo's room and opened up his laptop and she found a video that he had made of himself shortly before he died. And he's smiling and he said, I'm going to die when I reach, I believe, 70 kilos. And he was smiling, but it was like he had somehow had a premonition that he was going to die. And when he died, he was exactly that weight that he had said in the video. So we think that he somehow knew he some premonition about his his early death. |
| Mary/Ashley | Well, just like you've said, a saint for our time, certainly for our children and our young people. And to learn more about Sabrina Pharisee, make sure to check out her book on Blessed Soon to be Saint Carlo Acutis through Amazon, of course, or EWTN RC dot com. So that's EWTN religious catalog is what that stands for dot com. Sabrina thank you so much for joining us today. |
| Sabrina Farizi | My pleasure. |
| Mary/Ashley | To learn more about conversations with consequences, please visit the Catholic Association dot org. Thank you for joining us today. Welcome back to Conversations with consequences here on EWTN Radio. I'm your hostess, Ashley McGuire, and I'm so thrilled to be joined by our wonderful chaplain, Monsignor Roger Landry. And Monsignor, we have a special anniversary coming up for some very special American saints. Tell us about that. |
| Msgr Landry | So on Saturday, June 21st, we will mark the 100th anniversary of the beatification of the eight North American martyrs. So Saint Isaac jogs enshrined apropos of Saint John to the land, Saint Rene Goupil and others were canonized, were beatified excuse me, in 1925 by Pope Pius the 11th. They were canonized five years later by Pius the 11th in 1930. |
| Msgr Landry | And so up in Oris Field, New York, which is where three of these martyrs gave their lives for the Lord in for the Mohawks, there's going to be all day sort of recollection that they've asked me to come up and preach. There'll be a men's group making a long pilgrimage on foot. They're soliciting the prayers of the North American martyrs. There are similar activities taking place in Midland, Ontario, Canada, where the other five martyrs gave their lives for the Lord. And so it's going to be a great day for us to focus on courage, for us to focus on the missionary dimension of our Christian life, to focus on what it means to live father and mother, even your country, and go to another place where you're not necessarily going to be well received there. You might even be received with hostility and potentially martyrdom. But that love for Christ compelled these Jesuit missionaries to do all of this, to plant the gospel in the northern part of our continent. And so we go with gratitude in order to be able to thank God for them, to thank them for what they gave us of God, and to recommit ourselves to the real missionary dimension of our own life. And is that is always filled the actual site of their martyrdom, or is it just one location that sort of honors all of them? Were they martyred together? Tell us a little bit more about that. So the missionaries spread out, but three of the missionaries died literally right there in Oregon. The first one was Saint Rene Goupil, who died in September of 1642. He was Tomahawks for praying the rosary and blessing a young child, putting his head and blessing on this child. Because of that, he was tomahawk in or his fellow Saint Isaac Jog thought that he was immediately going to die as well. He ended up dying four years later in martyrdom. He had escaped from there. He went back to France. He was a celebrity. He eventually came back as the ambassador of France to the Mohawks because he's the only priest in the world who spoke the Mohawk dialect. He was safe when he was the ambassador of France, but he wanted to come back and celebrate mass for those with whom he had lived for a couple of years before his escape. And it was because of the mass kit that he left that some of the Mohawk superstitious thought that when they caught the influenza, it was because of whatever was secretly in that black box, which was his mass kit that as soon as he returned or he fell in order to be able to celebrate mass and the baptisms and you name it, he was killed there and he was killed along with Saint John de La Land, who was a Jesuit layman who was accompanying Saint Isaac Jörg there. And so all three of them were killed in Henry's fell. But back 1800 years ago, the theologian Tertullian, the great Christian writer, said that the blood of Christians is the seed. Sorry, the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church. And so a decade after Saint Isaac and Saint John de la Land were martyred, their injuries fell was born Saint Kittery, Tekakwitha. And so she grew up in that village and eventually she, 24 years later, died. And she's the first canonized Native American. And so they're there, their blood, their work, their missionary fervor actually led not just to Christians, but led to great saints, those in the Eternal Hall of Fame. And so that's what you encounter in Arrival. I like to call it the holiest place in the United States of America outside of the tabernacle closest to you, because it's associated literally with four great saints. I've been there and it really does have a very spiritual, a deep spiritual presence going on. It's hard to explain unless you've been there. But it's it's a beautiful place. And I'm am I correct that it recently was officially made a shrine. So it was made a national shrine. It's always been a diocese and shrine, I think. But there was a lay board that took over with the help of Bishop Jonathan Berger of Albany in his private capacity, not as Bishop of Albany, but that we asked the Jesuits to turn it over because the Jesuits were actually thinking about selling or Eastville. my word. And so this lay group approached with Bishop Schaff and Berger and God Bless the Jesuit provincial. He refused to sell it, but he gave it to us to be able to keep it alive and to be able to grow the shrine. And so part of that growth is with the help of the Knights of Columbus and many others were bringing it back to pristine condition. The grounds are incredible. There's a church. It's the largest church in this atmosphere. It fits over 10,000 people called the Coliseum. They're built after their canonization in 1930 that that hosted 10,000 people. And a couple of years ago, during the New York State Eucharistic Congress, we filled it, which was extraordinary to see. It's got 70 appearances. It's it's made like a round Colosseum. So that as you'd see in Rome, where so many of the Christians had suffered in the early centuries, people would be able to leave from 70 doors there to go back to the 70 disciples that were spread throughout all the entire world in order to continue the work that the North American martyrs were doing and always trying to bring the treasure, the gospel there. And now we, having received the gospel, I meant to bring it out to the entire world. So this boy, the friend of Our Lady of Martyrs, has been to an extraordinary every work, especially the executive director, Julie Baki, in order to be able to bring this as a real treasure for every Catholic in the U.S.. |
| Mary/Ashley | It really is. And we we thank you so much, Monsignor, for reflecting with us on this wonderful holy place, this American jewel and these wonderful martyrs who are just great patrons to call upon for our nation for the missionary purpose of the church. So we thank you, Monsignor. |
| Msgr Landry | Thank you. And I just encourage anybody within a few hours driving distance of Albany, please come on Saturday. We'll be having activities throughout the day. And then if you're not anywhere close to Albany, please do. Remember the North American martyrs on June 21st turned to Saint Isaac's Saint John and Saint Rene. Just ask for the cause, for the grace of courage so that we might be able to share the faith of the same intrepid love they did. |
| Sabrina Farizi | Thank you, Monsignor. |