Italian prosecutors have opened an investigation of an illegal online auction of a relic of Blessed Carlo Acutis, one month before his scheduled canonisation. Source: The Tablet.
Archbishop Domenico Sorrentino, who, as Bishop of Assisi-Nocera Umbra-Gualdo Tadino, is responsible for the church that houses Blessed Acutis’ tomb, submitted a complaint to the Perugia public prosecutor’s office after learning of the sale, according to a statement from the diocese on March 26.
An anonymous vendor sold the relic of Blessed Acutis’ hair for more than €2000 ($3440).
It was reportedly among several relics of Blessed Acutis advertised online, besides relics of St Francis of Assisi. Archbishop Sorrentino said this was “impossible to accept”.
“We do not know if the relic is real or false,” he said, “but even if it was entirely fabricated, if there was a deception, we would not only be witnessing a fraud but also an injury to religious sentiments.”
Carlo Acutis died from leukaemia in 2006, aged 15, and as the cause for his canonisation advanced he has become “a sort of ‘patron saint of the internet’”, the diocese’s statement noted. Before his death, he developed a website recording eucharistic miracles.
After his initial burial in a local cemetery in Tregeno, in northern Italy, Blessed Acutis’ body was moved to Assisi where he had asked to be buried. Shortly after his death, the Milan Archdiocese collected his belongings and in 2012 opened his cause with the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints.
Pope Francis declared him “venerable” in 2018 and the next year his body was exhumed and moved to a glass cabinet in the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, known as the Sanctuary of the Spoilation.
Archbishop Sorrentino was obliged to deny reports at the time that Blessed Acutis’ remains had been found incorrupt. The diocesan authorities prepared his remains for public display, with parts to be prepared as relics.
Sale of relics is forbidden under canon law, a prohibition reinforced by an instruction from the dicastery on “Relics in the Church: authenticity and preservation” in 2017.
Widespread devotions to Acutis have increased in the months ahead of Blessed Acutis’ canonisation on April 27, during the Jubilee of Teenagers at the Vatican.
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Bishop of Assisi requests investigation after Acutis relic sold online (The Tablet)
