Blessed Carlo Acutis

The Loreto house is excited to share the story of Blessed Carlo Acutis, a young Italian Catholic who is soon to become the first Saint canonised in this millennium on the 7^th of September 2025 by Pope Leo. Carlo was born in London in 1991 and sadly passed away in Monza, Italy, in 2006 at the age of 15. He lived a life of full of faith and shared both his love of the Eucharist and technology by creating a webpage of all the Eucharistic miracles. This webpage can be found here:

The Eucharistic Miracles in the World

Carlo’s Life

Carlo was a typical teenager. He loved nature, animals, video games, the Internet, played soccer, and had many friends. He saw the opportunity to share his faith and belief that "The Eucharist is our highway to heaven" on social media to many. Pope Francis recognised that Carlo was able to use technology to bring people closer to God. He attended Mass daily, even though his parents didn’t, and encouraged others to spend time with him in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament.

Despite being able to purchase items for himself, Carlo was very generous and shared his good fortunes with those in need. He would go out of is way to purchase sleeping bags for the homeless, spend time with the marginalised to show them that God was there for them too.  

When Carlo became ill with leukemia at the age of 15, instead of dwelling on himself, he offered all his pain to the Pope and the Church.

Path to Sainthood

For Carlo to become a Catholic Saint, two miracles through intercession need to be attributed to him from people interceding through him to God.  The first miracle attributed to his intercession was the healing of a child in Brazil from a severe pancreatic condition. The second miracle attributed to his intercession involved the healing of a young woman from Costa Rica, who suffered a severe head injury after falling from her bicycle in Florence, Italy, in 2022. Both miracles were deemed scientifically inexplicable by Vatican doctors and theologians and in 2024 Pope Francis accepted the second miracle and paved the way for Carlo’s sainthood.

Blessed Carlo Acutis is a beacon of light for all of us. He shows us that having faith doesn't distance us from modern day life, but technology can help to guide us to live the joy of the Gospel and share in the Eucharist as One Body of Christ. He reminds us to put God first and to serve others.

Let’s all be inspired by Blessed Carlo Acutis and use our talents and modern tools for good, to grow in our faith, and to share the love of Christ with the world.

On Father’s Day please take a moment, stop as a family and think about Carlo Acutis and how you all can share the love of Christ with the world as he is canonisation on the 7^th of September 2025.

Book Week Wrap Up

After wrapping up our Book Fair, with a phenomenal amount of money raised for the library, we continued our celebrations during Book Week last week. We started the week with a fantastic parade with so many great Book Character costumes. The students and staff looked incredible and all the effort put in was really worth it on the day.

After the parade, students ADVENTURED through three activities in multi-age groups. This was a fantastic opportunity for the students to work with a range of students from a variety of year levels and work with different teachers. 

The activities they got to participate in included, using the shortlisted book, ‘Spiro’ as inspiration to weave a web, going on an adventure around the school to find the shortlisted books to solve a puzzle in their passports and folding a paper boat to get and elephant across the ‘harbour’, just like in the shortlisted book, “How to Move a Zoo.” It was a glorious day outside and all the students were enthusiastic and engaged. 

After second break, students got to spend some time with their buddy classes doing some shared reading. It was so lovely to see the older students sharing their love of books with the younger ones. 

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We continued to celebrate books with a visit to all classes from the awesome David

Conley. David talked about his books and the process of writing and publishing and then completed a very entertaining drawing workshop with each class. The students were very engaged and excited and came away with lots of new drawing skills and a few were keen to become authors and illustrators themselves! See the review from Year 5 below.

David Conley, an illustrator author, came to St Joseph's and taught us a lot of cool drawings. David showed us how to make details more realistic and the characteristics of bushes, clouds and grass. He taught us how to draw sausage people, the reputation of drawing, and how to make different angles with faces. My favourite part probably was drawing the detailed animals because of how much easier it was to draw the animals. This is why this activity was a fun experience.

Rishaan

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We finished up the week with our Reading Buddies. Thank you to the families that sent in money to raise funds for the Story Dogs program.

It was such a fun, book-filled week that both the students and teachers enjoyed and I’d like to thank all our families for their support and enthusiasm throughout the week.