Today was a very special day in the calendar of St Malachy’s BNS with our first ever prayer service taking place over Zoom. The service was hosted by St Malachy’s BNS with Fr. David Barrins, Prior of the Friary leading us in prayer service. The service was broadcast to every class over Zoom and included prayers from both Sixth class, Ms Murphy’s and Mr O’Connell’s. A huge thank you to Fr. David and all the staff and pupils who made the service possible.

The service highlighted an historic event which will take place this coming Saturdsay, October 10th. This special event will be the beatification of Carlo Acutis, who died in 2006 aged 15. He will be in a beatified in a ceremony in Assisi.

More about Carlo Acutis

This young man loved football and went to school just like our boys in St Malachy’s. He loved helping people and was also a gifted computer programmer from an early age. Carlo was also fascinated by the Eucharist, and created a website cataloguing Eucharistic miracles from all over the world. Pope Francis referred to Carlo during the Synod of Bishops in 2018, offering him as a model of holiness in a digital age. In an interview with Catholic news agency EWTN, his mother, Antonia Salzano, said he could teach today’s young people how to properly use and enjoy technology, including the internet and social media. “Because he understood that they were potentially very harmful, very dangerous, he wanted to be the master of these means, not a slave,” she said. Her son “imposed on himself a maximum of one hour per week to use these means of communication”. This example would teach young people to “understand the need to maintain the proper autonomy and the need to be always able to say, ‘No, enough’, to not become a slave.” “Certainly today, in a society based a little on the ephemeral, on the exaltation of the self, of the ego, and where one forgets the existence of God, Carlo is certainly very prophetic,” said his mother. The miracle ascribed to Carlo involved the healing in 2013 of a Brazilian child suffering from a rare illness of the pancreas. The medical council of the Vatican’s Congregation for Saints’ Causes gave a positive view of the miracle last November and Pope Francis approved it in February. The beatification will take place at the Basilica of St Francis in Assisi; Carlo is buried in the church of St Mary’s Major in the town.