You shouldn’t buy a piece of a saint. Catholic Church denounces online sale of Carlo Acutis relics
With the upcoming canonization of its first millennial saint, the Catholic Church has turned to police in Italy to investigate the online sale of some purported relics of Carlo Acutis, who already has been drawing hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to his shrine.
“It’s not just despicable, but it’s also a sin,” said the Rev. Enzo Fortunato. “Every kind of commerce over faith is a sin.”
An anonymous seller had put up for online auction some supposedly authenticated locks of Acutis’ hair that were fetching upward of 2,000 euros ($2,200 US), according to the Diocese of Assisi, before being taken down. Last month, Bishop Domenico Sorrentino asked authorities to confiscate the items and added that if fraudulent, the sale would constitute a “great offense to religious belief.”
Acutis’ body was exhumed during the more-than-decade-long canonization process and treated so it could be preserved for public showing, including by removing certain organs. His face, which looks as if he were asleep, was reconstructed with a silicone mask, Sorrentino said.
Acutis’ heart has been preserved at a dedicated altar in another Assisi church; it will be taken to Rome for the canonization Mass.
There are different “classes” of relics — the most important are major body parts, such as the heart. Sorrentino gave Acutis’ pericardium — the membrane enclosing the heart — to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2022 for the duration of its multi-year Eucharistic Revival.
The bishop in charge of the saint’s body works with requests from other bishops around the world to give or lend relics — always for free — to be exhibited for veneration at parishes and other churches.
https://apnews.com/article/carlo-acutis-...e61dd76368
So the lesson is that private people are not allowed to make money on dead people, but the Church is by taking donations from people visiting his shrine and when they sell souvenirs of that corpse because lending relics "always for free" doesn't exclude donations which are encouraged. Officially, Church never charges for anything, and yet they are rich as fuck with numerous palaces, villas, jewelry, lobbying money, and other luxury.
With the upcoming canonization of its first millennial saint, the Catholic Church has turned to police in Italy to investigate the online sale of some purported relics of Carlo Acutis, who already has been drawing hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to his shrine.
“It’s not just despicable, but it’s also a sin,” said the Rev. Enzo Fortunato. “Every kind of commerce over faith is a sin.”
An anonymous seller had put up for online auction some supposedly authenticated locks of Acutis’ hair that were fetching upward of 2,000 euros ($2,200 US), according to the Diocese of Assisi, before being taken down. Last month, Bishop Domenico Sorrentino asked authorities to confiscate the items and added that if fraudulent, the sale would constitute a “great offense to religious belief.”
Acutis’ body was exhumed during the more-than-decade-long canonization process and treated so it could be preserved for public showing, including by removing certain organs. His face, which looks as if he were asleep, was reconstructed with a silicone mask, Sorrentino said.
Acutis’ heart has been preserved at a dedicated altar in another Assisi church; it will be taken to Rome for the canonization Mass.
There are different “classes” of relics — the most important are major body parts, such as the heart. Sorrentino gave Acutis’ pericardium — the membrane enclosing the heart — to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2022 for the duration of its multi-year Eucharistic Revival.
The bishop in charge of the saint’s body works with requests from other bishops around the world to give or lend relics — always for free — to be exhibited for veneration at parishes and other churches.
https://apnews.com/article/carlo-acutis-...e61dd76368
So the lesson is that private people are not allowed to make money on dead people, but the Church is by taking donations from people visiting his shrine and when they sell souvenirs of that corpse because lending relics "always for free" doesn't exclude donations which are encouraged. Officially, Church never charges for anything, and yet they are rich as fuck with numerous palaces, villas, jewelry, lobbying money, and other luxury.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
