OK, so the Vatican isn’t responsible for the Eucharistic Miracles of the World collection (EMW). Who is?

The author of the original Italian book, and depending on where you look also the English edition, is the Institute of St. Clement I, Pope and Martyr. The institute was founded in the year 2000 by Antonia Acutis Salzano, best known as the mother of the new Saint Carlo Acutis, to organize conferences in the Vatican and Rome on the 1900th anniversary of the martyrdom of St. Clement[1]. From there, it seems to have shifted its focus to writing books, including three “little catechisms” on the Eucharist, Penance, and Confirmation, as well as some other activities like providing scholarships for priests. The first of those books is obviously what is of interest to us.

The first edition of the Little Catechism on the Eucharist was published in 2002. The first part of the book was written by Fr. Roberto Coggi, and talks generally about the theology of the Eucharist. The second and third parts, Eucharistic Miracles and Eucharistic Saints, are the parts authored by the Institute of St Clement I, Pope and Martyr. How many people contributed to writing this section of the book is unclear, but Mrs. Acutis Salzano was the representative who did the book tour. She says that Carlo helped with the creation of some of the graphics[2] in this book, which was published when he was 11.

The Eucharistic Miracles section contains 15 stories:

  1. Father Daniel the Faranite’s Story
  2. The Host Changes Into Bleeding Flesh Rome (fifth or sixth century)
  3. The Miracle of Lanciano, Italy (750)
  4. The Miracle of Ferrara, Italy (1171)
  5. The Miracle of St. Anthony of Padua (1227)
  6. The Miracle of Alatri, Italy (1228)
  7. The Miracle of St. Clare of Assisi (1240)
  8. The Miracle of Bolsena, Italy (1263)
  9. The Miracle of Bagno di Romagna, Italy (1412)
  10. The Miracle of Turin, Italy (1453)
  11. The Miracle of Siena, Italy (1730)
  12. The Eucharist and Our Lady of Lourdes, France (1888)
  13. The Healing of Marie Louise Horeau (1889)
  14. The Healing of Gabriel Gargam (1899)
  15. The Face Etched on the Host at Saint-Andre de la Reunion (1902)

All of these are now featured in EMW, although the 3 stories from Lourdes are condensed into a single poster which summarizes  all of the claimed healings at Lourdes associated with the Eucharist. Some of the accounts are nearly word-for-word identical to the EMW, however most are expanded in EMW. No source is given for these stories other than the line in the introduction which says “various Eucharistic Miracles are cited from the tradition.”

The website of the Institute from 2002 also features an article about an exhibition by Sergio Meloni on Eucharistic Miracles in which he had made an exhibition about 68 cases. The images from that exhibition show the incidents named in the “city year” format that will be familiar to readers of EMW. The Internet Archive has only partial images from this exhibition, and there are some discrepancies in date and typos, so it is difficult to compare the lists with certainty, but at least 59 of these cases overlap with the EMW resources. The 2002 exhibition did not have separate sections for saints and miracles like the EMW does, so some of those entries are now covered in the saints section on EMW.  A few others were not included in the EMW book, including two very early ones (Rome 260, Italy and Plougastel-Daulas 324, France) and one modern one (Olawa 1997, Poland) which I have been unable to find any further information on. The writeups on these images are considerably shorter than those in EMW, and they fail to edit out the blatant antisemitism we’ll discuss next week, but other than that, it seems pretty clear that these are the beginnings of the EMW project. No references are cited in the images from this exhibition.

Prior to this, Mr. Meloni had written a book on Eucharistic Miracles in 2001. I haven’t read Mr. Meloni’s 2001 book, but it sounds like it is similarly short on references. That is as far back as I have been able to trace this project.

Jumping back to 2002, as part of the publicity for the Little Catechism on the Eucharist, Mrs. Acutis Salzano spoke at the Rimini Meeting, a Catholic gathering that has poster exhibitions. Apparently, Saint Carlo, age 11 at the time, was inspired by his mother’s talk and wanted to create an exhibition on Eucharistic Miracles for a future meeting. The Acutis family worked on this exhibition for about two and a half years. At that point, I presume the project was finished, although I can’t find where the exhibition was first displayed. It does not appear to have been at the Rimini Meeting.

Sergio Meloni published a new book on Eucharistic Miracles around that time. The publisher has now added Carlo Acutis as an author of that book on their website and notes that he “collaborated in the realization of this volume by collecting the images and photographs”, although a Google search of the original publication finds no mention of his name, even as an acknowledgement. It does show the Institute of St. Clement I, Pope and Martyr, but their role is unclear. Several sites selling the book list them as the Editor, although from the cover it looks like they might be a co-author.

I am a bit unclear exactly what Carlo Acutis’s role was in this project. Which is only relevant because the Vatican recently canonized him. In doing so, did they endorse the EMW? Officially, no. The only factors relevant to the canonization process are the degree to which he practiced faith, hope, charity, prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance during his life, and whether sick people got better after people prayed for his intercession. That’s it. They review a candidate’s works to see the degree to which the displayed the virtues, but accuracy is not a virtue. The church is not saying that this list is divinely inspired or infallible, or even that the quality of research is better than you would expect from a preteen searching the internet in the early days of Google.

I haven’t found any signs of further activity on this project between 2005 when Meloni’s book was published and October 2006 when Carlo Acutis suddenly became sick and passed away. In the years after his death, the project appears to have been revitalized in his memory. The exhibition began being shown all over the world, and many of the exhibitions were sponsored by Antonia Acutis Salzano. The Acutis family is extremely wealthy, worth hundreds of millions of dollars. His family paid the hundreds of thousands of dollars for his sainthood, and they also appear to have contributed significant funds to getting this exhibition into your church.

The domain name miracolieucaristici.org was registered on November 29, 2007, and the first edition of the Italian book was published the same year, by Edizioni San Clemente. I cannot find much information about the publisher, which appears to have only operated for about a year. Given the similarity of the names, I suspect it was created by the Institute of Saint Clement I Pope and Martyr, and that this is the rich man’s version of self-publishing.  

And that appears to be how we got here. No involvement from credible organizations, publishers or editors. No fact checkers. No citations or references. Just a little known author, a googling pre-teen and his mother, and gobs of money.

[1] Blessed Carlo Acutis, A Saint in Sneakers, by Courtney Mares

[2] ibid