Art Cordova
Staff Writer
Oct. 12 marked the consecration Mass for Christ the Teacher’s new chapel and welcomed the Blessed Sacrament for public veneration. But alongside the Sacrament, fascinating on-theme relics are housed in our new STEM building.
CTT’s own Most Sacred Heart of Jesus Chapel now sits on the second floor as the new spiritual hearth of the engineering, business and nursing departments. It’s fitting, then, that the university would select appropriate relics to populate our chapel, including Bl. Carlo Acutis, St. Bernardine of Sienna and St. Gianna Beretta Mola.
After the consecration Mass, each of the interned relics were given veneration and named the patrons of the three main schools occupying CTT.
The engineering department will be blessed by the blessed patron of computer programmers and engineers, Carlo Acutis. The beloved young boy from Milan dedicated his short but prayerful life to cataloging Eucharistic Miracles and Marian Apparitions on the internet to share with the world.
The chapel houses a first-class relic of Acutis, some of his hairs, which was personally acquired by Rev. Gregory Plow, TOR.
It is notable how popular Acutis has grown since his funeral in 2006. Being an everyday kid — a Star Wars fan and lover of video games — who was also a great saint, catechist and evangelist, greatly resonates with students and reminds us that we are called to be holy in our daily lives.
On May 27, Pope Francis cleared the way for Acutis to be canonized after recognizing the necessary second miracle for him to be officially named a saint.
St. Bernardine of Sienna will be watching over the students and faculty of the business department. He was so great a Franciscan preacher that his order of the Friars of Strict Observance grew from 300 to 4,000 by his death. For this, he is the patron saint of advertisers and public relations, a great friend to the business world.
The university thought it would be significant for Franciscan University to house a Franciscan relic in the chapel, and the good Lord was happy to provide a way through a generous donor.
St. Gianna Beretta Molla, a heroine in the medical profession, protects the nursing department with motherly care. A 20th century saint, she is the intercessor for mothers, physicians and the unborn.
St. Gianna was recently canonized in 2004 — only 20 years ago. The Italian saint was a married woman, mother of four and well-to-do pediatrician who never surrendered her zeal for caring for the poor, elderly and unborn.
When diagnosed with a dangerous uterine fibroma, she refused the suggested abortion and chose to undergo surgery to remove it to save her child’s life. While the removal was successful, she continued to have severe pain until Gianna’s daughter, Gianna Emanuela Molla, was born healthy and safe via c-section. She unfortunately passed from an infection seven days after her birth.
Her monstrance in the chapel contains a first-class relic of her hair and clothing obtained with the help of a student and was gifted by Dr. Gianna Emanuela Molla, the saint’s daughter.
The university is blessed to have such a treasury of relics and to be gifted with great school patrons. For those longing to pray with these great saints, come to Most Sacred Heart of Jesus Chapel and rejoice in them and Jesus Himself.