Question of Faith
A weekly question of faith answered by Cleveland Catholics. Fr. Damian Ference, Vicar of Evangelization and Deacon Mike Hayes Director of Young Adult Ministry in the Diocese of Cleveland co-host with frequent guests from the Diocesan Office who join in the conversation. Sponsored by Briefcase Marketing--check them out at https://www.Briefcase.marketing
Question of Faith
What's the Fuss About Carlo Acutis?
SPONSOR: Briefcase Marketing
Guests: Logan Feldkamp, Youth Minister at St. Christopher and Emily Ahlin, Diocesan Archivist.
Carlo Acutis represents something revolutionary in Catholic sainthood as a relatable millennial teen known for his extraordinary love of Jesus despite his ordinary appearance in jeans and sneakers. Born in London and raised in Italy, he became a catalyst for his family's return to active faith while creating an extensive website documenting Eucharistic miracles in 2001, well before user-friendly platforms existed.
• An extremely typical boy of the early 2000s who played soccer, video games, and created websites
• His goal wasn't to keep people online but to lead them to encounter Jesus in the Eucharist
• Died in 2006 and is entombed in Assisi in his regular clothes – blue jeans, quarter-zip pullover and ordinary sneakers
• Being canonized on Divine Mercy Sunday (April 27, 2024) at 2:30am
• New film about Carlo Acutis releasing in theaters April 27-29, with screenings in Cleveland area
• A relatable role model showing modern teens that saints can look just like them.
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Theology of the Body CLE
St. John Cantius Parish
Join us at St. Christopher Parish in Rocky River for our Carlo Acutis canonization celebration featuring video games, Italian food, and a special Mass with modern worship music on Saturday evening, April 27th. And check out the artwork of Monica Skrzypczak at Outpouring of Trust.
SPONSOR: Briefcase Marketing
On today's Question of Faith. What's the fuss about Carlo Acutis? Hey everybody, this is Question of Faith. I am Deacon Mike Hayes. I am the Director of Young Adult Ministry in the Diocese of Cleveland.
Speaker 2:I am Emily Ahlen, Director of Archives for the Diocese of Cleveland.
Speaker 3:I'm Logan Feldkamp, Pastoral Minister at St Christopher Parish in Rocky River. Woohoo, that's a great parish.
Speaker 2:It is a good parish, one that all three of us have had experiences at. That's true. These two are biased.
Speaker 3:Not at all. My pastor totally didn't pay me to say that.
Speaker 1:I have been in four parishes here in the diocese.
Speaker 1:I am not biased at all in saying that St Chris is awesome. Anyway, I do like St Christopher's Well, thank you. I'm on staff at St Chris as their parish deacon, so that's why we're saying all those who are uninformed. But we did get a question in saying from someone about the about-to-be canonized Carlo Acutis. And they said so what's the big deal about this kid? They said you know, he was a young person who did a lot of work in basically putting together websites about Eucharistic miracles. And they said you know, he put all this up on the internet and so what's the big deal about him? Why should he be a saint instead of anybody else? And so I brought the two of you in who I know have at least somewhat of a devotion to Carlos Acutis and are planning to do some things around the canonization and wanted to see what you would say. So what is the fuss about Carlo Acutis?
Speaker 3:Yeah, for me, Carlo is a very ordinary young man except in one way, and that's his extraordinary love for Jesus, particularly in the Eucharist. When you hear about the story of his life, you see that he was an extremely typical boy in the late 90s, early 2000s. He liked to play soccer, he liked to play video games, He'd play around with video animation, making websites and videos with his friends video animation, making websites and videos with his friends. So in all aspects of our digital age he was a very ordinary individual, except he was the main catalyst for bringing his family back to the faith, particularly his mother, who was baptized and received the sacraments but was never a strongly practicing Catholic. So his desire to be in the local Catholic church every time that he walked by led his mom to become a catechist and a more practicing Catholic, and so his strong devotion to Eucharist and to the local church and serving the poor was something truly extraordinary for his time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and one of the things I would say it's also you know, we say how normal he was about you know time. One of the things I would say is also we say how normal he was about putting things up on the internet. He did this in the turn of the century. He did this in 2001. No one was doing anything on the internet. That's remarkable on its own.
Speaker 2:Just the HTML he had to know to do it because it's not like you have today. We have WordPress and Canva. I'm not 100% sure when WordPress got its start, but you had. I mean, he had to know some stuff to get all that on the internet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wordpress, I think is about 2006, 2007, because I remember being an early adopter of that myself.
Speaker 2:Okay, so he died in 2006. So he was doing this like before WordPress then, for sure, oh, yeah, for sure, yeah, I mean even B, this, like before wordpress.
Speaker 1:Then for sure, oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean even busted halo, which I founded. You know, that was well before wordpress and we switched to wordpress around, like you know. Maybe it's 2004 now to think about it, but we have been going for three years together yeah, exactly we have been going for about three years and we had a you know and we didn't know code or anything. We had to hire a group of people to do that for us. So remember this at my cause for canonization, by the way.
Speaker 2:You got it Deacon.
Speaker 1:Mike, Because that's going to happen Now. Emily, you went and visited Carlo Acutis, right.
Speaker 2:I was on the bishop's pilgrimage to Assisi, florence and Rome, and Assisi was the first place we visited, and so I actually got to see Carlo, because they have. It was Carlo's request that he was buried in Assisi, even though I think he like he wasn't. He didn't live in Assisi, he was like, I think, either. I think the tour guide said his grandparents had property there. He had been to Assisi a number of times and that was his request was. It was a beautiful place, he wanted to be buried there, and so he's even going to remain there after the canonization. Um, that's just where he is, but he was actually born in london.
Speaker 2:Did you guys know that? I did. Yeah, he was born in london and then, you know, over there, the various countries are like states here, but he is italian and so they, you know, made their way back to italy. I don't remember where exactly he lived in italy. I think it was somewhere in the north. Was it like milan?
Speaker 3:I believe he lived in milan. I think so yeah, yeah, anyways.
Speaker 2:so it's, it's interesting. You know they're like okay, we're gonna take you to see because you know there's so many giants in assisi, right? So we started with saint francis and then we went to go visit saint Clair, and then they're like, okay, we're going to see Carlo Acutis now. So we like walk by this elementary school, it's in this, you know, little church off to the side, very plain church. And you know, I'm walking in and I'm expecting like I don't know if anybody's ever been to the Mother Cabrini Shrine in New York, but you walk into the Mother Cabrini Shrine and there in the main altar is Mother Cabrini and she's just there. And that's what I was expecting in this church. But it wasn't. It was, you know, very plain, nondescript. And then Carlo was off to the side in a see-through. What's the Plexiglass?
Speaker 3:tomb.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the word. Tomb Entombed altar.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, an entombed altar, um, and you, I mean you can reach out, like it's. They have like a little bench there, um, and you can like sit there and like reach out and touch him, and so we were with a group of almost 100 people, so I didn't get to spend a lot of time with him. So I actually went back later um to pray a holy hour and then I went to go visit carlo again because I was just I have to, I have to admit, before I went to assisi I was kind of like I I was also kind of like, why is everybody making a big deal about this kid? But then you look at him and you're like, oh, shoot. And you like think about, like like he was born in 1991, he's four years older than me, like he's not. He's not, like he's younger than me because he died in 2006. But I mean he's not really because we you know, if we, if the resurrection is real, we never stop aging Right, I thought you can edit that out if that's theologically incorrect.
Speaker 2:But you never stop, like I was like you know, he's like what I'm going to be 30 this year, so he's 34. He stop like I was like you know, he's like what I'm gonna be 30 this year, so he's 34, he's 34 years old. Just you know, in heaven and um, and it just hit me. I was like, oh my gosh, like a playstation 2 is a second class relic like this is insane. I had a playstation 2, um, so it was. Yeah, it was, it was interesting. But I think that's the way Carlo would have wanted it right, because his whole life was Pointing us in the direction of Jesus. It wasn't like, hey, look at me, I'm Carlo. I Designed a website. It was no, look at all these Eucharistic miracles. Look at all these Eucharistic miracles. Go see Jesus.
Speaker 3:And that's one of the things with him is, the goal of his website was to get people off the internet and into the church to experience Jesus the way that he did, the way that he led his family to, and the one thing that's so impactful about I've never been to Assisi, I've never been out of the country, but seeing the pictures of him entombed in this plexiglass he looks like a kid who'd show up to my youth group on Sunday night. I think that's the thing that's so powerful for me, as well as for the students who I help minister to at St Chris is like this is a kid who looks just like them.
Speaker 2:It's the first time I've ever seen a saint statue where, I mean, he's like all over a cc, right, like every shop is selling carlo acutis statues in various sizes, and he's always wearing a red polo shirt, jeans and white sneakers. He's he's buried in jeans. He's like wearing like this like blue quarter zip, blue jeans and then like very ordinary sneakers. Um, and so yeah, just just a saint statue where, like you know, he's wearing things that I wear. Um, I think is really cool.
Speaker 1:I mean that's always the criticism that we, that we hear from people. I say, you know when, when the catholic church looks at all of their heroes, you have to go back you know 1500 years to find one. You know is that there's not too many modern saints. I mean I've seen two. I mean I've seen both Mother Teresa and John Paul II in the flesh, but that's about as far you know. When I think about well, who before then? You know not really many.
Speaker 2:And even then, not to knock either of them, because I love both. Mother Teresa and St John Paul II is probably my favorite saint of all time and St John Paul II is probably my favorite saint of all time. You know, you buy a statue of St John. Paul II, and he's dressed like the pope.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Right, he was a pope and Mother Teresa is in her habit. Right Like, unless I join the missionaries of charity, I'm not going to look like Mother Teresa, but I look like. Like. I have polo shirts, I have blue jeans, I have sneakers. Carlo is a saint and I can be too.
Speaker 1:Carlo's pictured with a dog and a soccer ball a lot. So of course I love dogs. So I said to Logan the other day I said I'm buying this statue and he goes. Well, I said there's a dog in it. It's like, carlo, you just had a dog and he goes. Yeah, I was like, okay, cool, I'm a dog.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean that goes to the relatability for the young people of our communities. How many of them play a sport? Carlo loved soccer. How many of them have a family pet? Carlo loved his dog. How many of them wear a backpack to school every?
Speaker 1:day.
Speaker 3:Exactly. He's got aviator sunglasses hanging off the front of his polo.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's how I come into work every day in the summer. He's just such an approachable persona. Yeah, it's great. So what are you two planning? And at St Chris, you know, logan, you're the youth minister on staff and Emily you help them out from time to time. So what are you planning for this big canonization day?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we have a couple nice recipes in the cook pot over at St Christopher. One of the things that we're preparing for next month is so he's going to be canonized at like 2.30 in the morning on Divine Mercy Sunday. So to celebrate preemptively, because I'm not going to wake students up at 2.30 in the morning is we're going to have?
Speaker 2:a big bummer. That would be much more fun. Yes, that would be much more fun and much more taxing on the poor youth minister.
Speaker 3:So we're going to throw a vigil canonization party for Carlo Acutis, fully Acutis-themed. We're going to have video game trucks there, we're going to play Mario Kart on the big 100-inch projector in our parish center, we're going to have Italian-themed catering to go along with it, photo booth, virtual reality, and then we're going to end the night with a special Acutis-themed mass. So one of my good friends, brandon Woods, who's a youth minister down in the Medina area, is going to be coming up to play some more modern worship music for that Mass. We're going to invite the entire parish, but most importantly, our middle school and high school students, as well as their families, to come and experience this Mass in a very beautiful and intimate way, which will be exciting and Emily has a good friend who's working on something very special for that mass, for us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I had no idea. So I have a friend who runs a Catholic art store online. Her name is Monica Skripchik. She's the name of her store's outpouring of trust and she's amazing. So her degree is in technical theater, um, and when she graduated from college she just felt like the lord was calling her to open this sacred art store. And so she's done like some other, like classes and more intensive workshops since then, but she's basically self-taught and does these oil paintings and sells prints of them. I have oh, I should have brought my water bottle. I've got monica stickers all over my water bottle. She sells stickers but she takes commissions, and so she.
Speaker 2:I had no idea until I talked to her yesterday, but Carla was her patron and I think has been for a number of years since he was beatified, and she had a print of him and I've been I don't know, instagram algorithm figured me out and I've been sending Logan things like, oh, we need this, oh, we need this, oh, we need this, and they're all like a cutest theme. So I saw Monica had a print and I was like, oh, this is my friend, monica, she painted this, we need this. And Logan was like, actually, can she do a custom painting for us, and I was like I'll reach out and ask. And so she's going to do a custom painting of Carlo Acutis that you're going to put in the sanctuary right for the mass.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for the mass we're looking for a nice themed image, and a lot of the art of him is AI generated, which is such a shame. So you know, when it comes to art being used in our churches, it's very important to me personally that you know it's created with human hands and human minds. So we're very excited to get this custom commission done by Monica. It'll be an awesome feature for our Mass.
Speaker 1:That'll be awesome. Yeah, thank her for doing that. That's really awesome.
Speaker 2:She is so excited and I was like, oh my goodness, because she said that her parish, because she lives in Illinois, her parish is naming their youth room after Carlo Acutis. Oh, very nice, and so she's painting a mural in there for them. I was like, oh my gosh, you're going to be so tired of painting Carlo Acutis. And she's like, no, I don't think I could ever get tired of painting him. And I was like, all right, then that's great.
Speaker 1:You keep going right yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she's, she'll be very excited.
Speaker 1:So we'll put a link to her work in our show notes as well, which will be great, so you could all check out the many things that she does.
Speaker 1:She's she is really great. I was looking at some stuff with Logan yesterday that she's done. So she's a very talented person. So thanks for that. And you know, all right, on Sunday, april 27th, surprise, surprise Bishop Molesik sent this to us this morning there's going to be a film out about Carlo Acutis from April 27th to the 29th and they're going to be in, actually here in our local area it'll be as well. So, crocker Park and Mentor out in strongsville, all the local films, so basically the regals and the cinemarks, I think all have it, um, and so if you want to check out that, it's a great trailer, uh, carloacutisfilmcom, and we'll put that in our show notes, um, and you can buy tickets right there. So if you have a youth group and you want to take them out, that'll be a great place, uh, for them to go for a little outing for the day, to go see this film. It's kind of funny. Chris Stefanik is in the front of it and he said hey, don't let the sneakers fool you. There's nothing ordinary about this kid.
Speaker 3:Well, it's produced by Mark Wall's production studio and the trailer looks great. If you have an opportunity, check out the trailer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, high production values, it's very good. Yeah, all right, and you know who has high production values Our friends at Briefcase Marketing, who are our sponsor, and so you know what they do. Guys, do you know about Briefcase Marketing, logan?
Speaker 2:Well, you would if you listened to the Question of Faith podcast with Deacon Mike and Father Damien.
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Speaker 2:That sounds really bad.
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Speaker 2:Oh, that's right, they did. The Theology of the Body, cleveland website. I was actually just on there the other day and it does look sleek, modern and all of the things we just said. It's really nice.
Speaker 1:They did St John Cantius's website too and I can remember that very distinctly because I remember going to it once and saying this website needs an update and the pastor had told me that they were going to be updating their website very quickly. And then I went to it like maybe a couple weeks later and it had already been redone and I was like whoa, this is different, this looks really great. So they do a good job bottom line. So briefcasemarketing, dan First will take good care of you. Church Search our wonderful parish at St Chris.
Speaker 3:St Chris yeah, giant community of what 3,300 families out in Rocky River, yeah lots of young families.
Speaker 1:Man, we have a little summer gathering that we have every year, st Chris Weekend, and I remember looking over at one portion of our parking lot and there were just so many young moms and dads with their kids just hanging out all day. I was like wow, this is a parish with a bunch of young families.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, it's a miracle some weekends that Deacon Mike can get through his homily, because the babies are just consistently crying. It almost sounds like they're miked up. They're so loud.
Speaker 1:You're not crying, you're dying, exactly.
Speaker 3:That's the bottom line, amen.
Speaker 1:I've had to learn to tune it out, like just keep preaching.
Speaker 3:Mike, just keep preaching. No, it's great. As the youth minister, I hear future members of our wonderful youth ministry. You know just 10, 11 years down the line. But no, we have great ministries. Job security yeah, exactly For young families. We have a very vibrant youth ministry, supportive pastors and staff, a great K-8 school, an awesome PSR program, so a parish that's very much alive and thriving.
Speaker 2:Lots of Baptists. Great softball team. Thank you.
Speaker 3:Yes, a good softball team too.
Speaker 1:Yes, speaking of which, so our softball team is going to be starting soon.
Speaker 3:So when are we going to start taking registrations? Yeah, I think we're aiming to have sign-ups up no later than April 1st. Very, nice. That's going to push that to the 31st or to April 2nd. No, we're going to make sure those are open by April 1st and then those will be closing May 1st, hoping to have opening day I think it's the weekend of June 1st, so the way the wonderful Gregorian calendar fell for us this year worked out quite well.
Speaker 1:Yes, very nice, and we might add a team or two this year. We're going to see what happens. Yeah, we'll see.
Speaker 3:I think we're going to have a new one forming out of the University Circle area, the Holy Rosary Parish area. So yeah, it'll be awesome.
Speaker 1:That'll be good. So if you haven't played softball with us, you could check us out. We do have some stuff up there from last season right now on the website. Uh, so we'll put that link in the show notes, but then the registrations will be starting next week.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a blast good way to meet new people. Low pressure. Um, you don't have to be a softball expert to come out and play and here on this podcast each week.
Speaker 1:We do a little softball recap every week so we tell you the scores, we tell you who did well and the teams will kind of get to listen to hear what happened in the various games around the league.
Speaker 2:So check it out Best thing I do all year Absolutely Hands down 100%.
Speaker 1:And you became quite a first baseman last year.
Speaker 2:I would say I shook off the dust.
Speaker 1:All right. So fourth Sunday of Lent, and here's our reading. So this weekend, a very's our reading for this week. This weekend, a very popular gospel reading on the prodigal son, one of my favorites, and so the part that really resonates with me the older brother he's the one who works all the time and then this brother of his, as he says, this son of yours, comes back and you killed the fatted calf for him because you never gave me as much as a kid goat to go and have a party with my friends.
Speaker 1:I always think of the unfairness of that. I think I would resonate with that. But at the same time the father says this brother did squander his inheritance and I have no intention of giving it back to him. Everything I own is yours now. And so what are you complaining about? Come inside and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and now he's alive, and so I like that. And we don't know whether the brother went in or not. They just leave it out. We don't know if the brother actually went in or if he stayed in his own bitterness, and so that's sort of a call to us Are we folks who stay in our own bitterness, or do we go inside and join the party with everybody else.
Speaker 2:If the person in the Bible is not given a name, it's because it's you, so the brother doesn't have a name. He's just the brother, so he's you. Do you go in or not? Right?
Speaker 3:Awesome. Yeah, I really love the responsorial Psalm this week, just with with Carlo Acutis on the mind, you know just just that first verse um, his praise shall be ever in my mouth. Let my soul glory in the Lord. The lowly will hear me and be glad. Acutus was, you know, fed by the Eucharist and then would go out and, with his family and his friends, serve the poor of Milan. And if that little snippet of the responsorial psalm just doesn't perfectly capture the beauty of Acutus's life, I don't know what does.
Speaker 1:Great, All right. So carloacutisfilmcom for the film. Canonization will be happening on Divine Mercy Sunday at the bright and early time of 2.30 am. Of course, again, you can watch at any time, but they'll certainly have it recorded all the time. And yeah, if you're at St Chris, you want to join our little party. How would they do it? Just go to stchrisparishcom.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we'll have something hopefully getting on the website later this week stchrisparishcom, and I think the Mass is going to be at 9.15 pm. The party is going to run for about two hours before. That Party is exclusively for the youth of the parish. If you're a youth from another parish, you're welcome to join us. Mass will be open to everybody Very nice, all right.
Speaker 1:So, logan, thanks for being here. Thanks for doing that. Emily, thanks for your good work, as always. Thank you, and we'll see you here next time, here on Question of Faith.
