Blessed Carlo Acutis’ Eucharistic Miracles Exhibition Stirs Interest, Devotion at Historic English Shrine| National Catholic Register
RAMSGATE, England — The worldwide “Eucharistic Miracles” exhibition, first devised by Blessed Carlo Acutis, is now showing at the Ramsgate Shrine, one of England’s holiest sites where St. Augustine of Canterbury landed in 597 to evangelize...
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RAMSGATE, England — The worldwide “Eucharistic Miracles” exhibition, first devised by Blessed Carlo Acutis, is now showing at the Ramsgate Shrine, one of England’s holiest sites where St. Augustine of Canterbury landed in 597 to evangelize the English.
Blessed Carlo, who lived from 1991 to 2006 and was beatified in 2020, placed the Holy Eucharist — what he called “my highway to heaven” — at the heart of his life. “By standing before the Eucharistic Christ, we become holy,” he once said, and he would often ask himself why people would queue for hours for a rock concert but not line up for the Eucharist in the same way.
So in 2002, at the age of 11, Blessed Carlo began devising the exhibition; and after two and a half years, and with the help of his parents, it was completed. According to its original curators, it has since been shown in thousands of parishes and at more than 100 universities.
Made up of a series of panels featuring miracles approved by the Church from the eighth century until 2008, the exhibition reveals the breadth of a supernatural phenomenon that affirms the reality of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The entire exhibition is available for download, and this particular one has been curated by Michael Southern, a parishioner in the nearby parish of St. Augustine’s in Tunbridge Wells.
“I find these Eucharistic miracles through the ages deeply moving,” said Father Jonathon Routh, parish priest at the Shrine of St. Augustine.
“For those who not only have eyes to see and ears to hear but also have faith, these miracles tell us that the Lord is with his people in our sufferings. They give an infinite depth of meaning to our greeting, ‘The Lord be with you.’”
Twenty-three miracles are being featured in St. Augustine’s Shrine out of a total exhibit of 160, each divided by countries and circumstances. They include miracles that followed accidents involving the Eucharist, priests struggling to believe in the Real Presence, and when Hosts have been stolen or sacrilege attempted.
Featured Miracles
One of the most famous Eucharistic miracles featured is that of Lanciano, Italy, in A.D. 750, the first reported Eucharistic miracle when the consecrated Host physically revealed itself to be truly the flesh and blood of Christ. Scientific studies in 1970, later supported by the World Health Organization’s own research, showed that the Host consists of real flesh in the form of heart muscle tissue and the rare AB blood type also found in other Eucharistic miracles and the Shroud of Turin. The Host has not decomposed to this day.
Another famous miracle occurred in Santarém, Portugal, in 1247. A married woman, distraught over her husband’s infidelity, consulted a sorceress who promised to help her repair her marriage if she brought her a consecrated Host. This she did, removing the Host from her mouth at Mass and taking it from the church, only to find it was bleeding profusely. Frightened, she went home and hid the bleeding Host in a trunk, which that night emitted a mysterious light, waking the couple. The wife confessed what she had done to her husband, and they both spent the night in adoration before the miraculous Host, which continued to bleed for three days.
A priest returned the Host to the church in a solemn procession, and it was placed in a beeswax reliquary. Almost a century later, in 1340, the wax reliquary was found shattered and the Host suddenly contained in a crystal vase. The Precious Blood was mixed with the wax. The Sacred Host is now preserved in an 18th-century Eucharistic throne above the main altar and has been venerated by popes who’ve granted plenary indulgences in the past to pilgrims who visit it.
Another miracle exhibited is that of a Host in Santa Maria Church in Buenos Aires in 1996. The priest put the Host in a bowl of water and placed it in the tabernacle to be dissolved (standard practice when it is partially consumed and may have fallen from a communicant’s mouth or unintentionally dropped to a less-than-clean floor), but, within days, a blood-like substance issued from the Host.
Then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio (now Pope Francis) asked for it to be scientifically examined, and eminent pathologist and cardiologist Dr. Frederick Zugibe in New York was asked to test a sample of the Host without being told what it was. He found inflamed heart muscle tissue infiltrated with white blood cells, which he said was unusual but would happen in the case of “trauma or injury.”
The tissue of the heart “had undergone degenerative changes of the myocardium possibly due to an obstruction of a coronary artery,” Zugibe said. “This obstruction may be the result of […] a severe blow to the chest over the heart.”
What also astonished the cardiologist was that the white blood cells and the heart tissue had been preserved despite having been kept in water for three years.
One of the most recent featured miracles occurred in 2008 in Sokółka, Poland, when a consecrated Host fell out of the hands of a priest while he was distributing Holy Communion. The Host was also placed in a vessel filled with water and placed in the tabernacle. But less than a week later, a red stain could be seen clearly on the Sacred Host.
Polish scientists independently analyzed it and found numerous indicators showing it contained cardiac muscle tissue and of the kind typical of the extreme phase preceding death. They also stated that the time it had spent in water would normally have destroyed it. Moreover, they found that the cardiac tissue was joined to the consecrated Host in an inseparable manner — something humanly impossible to create.
The “Eucharistic Miracles” exhibition also includes those caused when a Host had been stolen or sacrilege attempted, as in 1411, when a thief dropped the consecrated Host — and it was discovered several days later by a pious woman. “The Host glowed brilliantly, divided in two pieces but united by threads of bleeding flesh,” the exhibit states.
Lack of Awareness
Michael Southern, who approached St. Augustine’s Shrine to display the exhibition, told the Register that his desire to have parishes in England show the miracles stemmed from a trip to Medjugorje 35 years ago and coincidental trips to Santarém, Bolsena-Orvieto (where a Eucharistic miracle occurred that led to Pope Urban IV instituting the Solemnity of Corpus Christi the following year, 1264) and Buenos Aires.
His belief in the Real Presence grew from these visits and learning that the miracles were backed by science. Southern said that it puzzled him that the Church had made little mention of the miracles, seemed “almost embarrassed by them,” and that so few Catholics were aware of such astonishing phenomena.
His previous attempts to have some kind of exhibition shown had been turned down, but he then discovered Blessed Carlo’s exhibition that was available to download. His local parish priest agreed to present it, after which Southern offered it free on loan to other parishes. He has no direct link with the Acutis family, but Southern met Anna Johnstone, a Catholic convert and governess to Carlo’s two siblings born after Blessed Carlo’s death, who shared her insights with him.
“Speaking personally, this exhibition has really brought alive for me our devotion to the Sacred Heart,” Johnstone wrote in notes accompanying the exhibition. She recalled how Blessed Carlo had stressed that we are all invited to become like St. John the Apostle, the “Beloved Disciple,” and that when we pray before the Blessed Sacrament “we are like John, resting our head on Jesus’ heart.”
Andrew Kelly, manager of the Shrine of St. Augustine, said reaction to the exhibition “has been fascinating,” adding that it is “surprising how many Catholics find the idea of Eucharistic miracles uncomfortable; for others, it is a joy and treasure.”
The shrine, which was designed by the famous 19th-century Gothic Revival architect Augustus Pugin and houses his tomb, is a “special place,” he said, adding, “We love to host exhibitions such as this one.”
“At a time when Christianity appears to be in retreat in England, St. Augustine’s reminds us of where our culture and our faith come from,” said Kelly. “Pugin built without compromise with the Eucharist, the focus of all his churches.”
Father Routh noted that through learning about these miracles, not only is the Real Presence affirmed but one sees how those who experienced these miracles shared in the Lord’s passion, including Blessed Carlo, who, soon after the exhibition was completed, was diagnosed with leukemia and died at age 15. He hoped that the exhibition would encourage greater reverence for the Eucharist, such as kneeling and receiving on the tongue, and better interior preparation for Holy Communion.
Southern said that, so far, the exhibition is booked for half of 2025, and he is waiting for responses from other parishes. When he mentions it to people, the “general reaction has always been one of interest,” and he invites any parish in the U.K. to contact him if they would like to display it.
His hoped-for fruits of the exhibition are “an increase in awareness, in faith, and in commitment.”
Accompanying the exhibition is guidance from Bishop Raffaello Martinelli, a former official at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who explains that a Christian is “not obliged to believe” in the miracles but that they can be “useful and fruitful aids to faith.”
“We must never forget nor fail to mention that the Eucharist is the true, great inexhaustible daily miracle,” he writes and, quoting St. Ignatius of Antioch, reminds the faithful that the Eucharist “is the medicine of immortality, the antidote keeping us from death, and helping us to live in Jesus Christ forever.”
