Los Angeles parish receives relic of St Carlo Acutis

Father Miguel Ángel Ruiz’s dream for his parish has come true: After years of work and prayer, the parish has its very own first-class relic of Saint Carlo Acutis.

Fr. Ruiz is pastor of Our Lady of the Rosary of Talpa in the Boyle Heights area of Los Angeles. While on a parish pilgrimage to Assisi in early September, he was given some of the new Catholic saint’s hair to bring back to their church.

“God’s providence always surprises us,” Fr. Ruiz said, according to Angelus News.

St. Carlo, who is best known for his devotion to the Eucharist and founding a website to document Eucharistic miracles, died in 2006 at the age of 15. While his remains were initially buried in Ternengo, Italy, his dying wish was to be buried in the city that Saint Francis and Saint Clare called home, and his body was moved to Assisi.

While in Assisi, Fr. Ruiz and other pilgrims from Our Lady of the Rosary of Talpa attended Mass at St. Mary Major of Assisi Church, where St. Carlo’s remains rest. At the end of Mass, Fr. Ruiz was presented with the relic.

 The group of pilgrims was in Rome for St. Carlo’s canonization Sept. 7.

When Fr. Ruiz began ministry at Our Lady of the Rosary of Talpa two years ago, the idea to obtain a relic for the parish came to him. He had been thinking of ways to help bring the young people of the parish closer to God, and he thought that the relic would inspire them.

Despite initially being told it would be impossible for the parish to get a relic of then-Blessed Carlo, Fr. Ruiz says he could not shake his desire.

“I said, ‘I’ll do everything on my part: send the emails I have to send, and pray what I have to pray, and let the Lord take care of it,’” Fr. Ruiz recalled, according to Angelus News.

In addition to bringing home a relic for his own parish, Fr. Ruiz was responsible for bringing two other relics of the saint to nearby parishes:  St. Monica Church in Santa Monica and St. Thomas the Apostle in Los Angeles’ Pico-Union neighborhood.