Prayers are being said for the swift return of the missing relic of Carlo Acutis, a beloved teenage boy who is soon to be canonised.
The lock of hair from the late Carlo Acutis was kept in a small black relic box but vanished from a table at the Ploughing Championships last week where a priest was hosting a vocations stall.
Distraught Fr Bryan Shortall, of Priorswood parish in Dublin, had borrowed the relic of Italian teenager Carlo from another parish, aiming to offer blessings during the three-day event.
But while his back was "momentarily" turned, the relic vanished.
Fr Bryan said: "It was inadvertently taken. It wasn’t 'robbed.'
"There were many people there. There were other relics and pictures. We were having an expo with Vocations Ireland.
"Young people, middle-aged people, old people, coming to the stalls and stands, a wonderful atmosphere, great weather, and I turned around momentarily and when I turned back it was gone.
"So I searched and I panicked and it must have been taken by somebody perhaps thinking it was on offer, as simple as that."
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He raised the alarm at the site after its disappearance on the first day of the championships in Ratheniska, Co Laois, and alerted local radio in the hope an appeal would see its swift return.
"I just went to security and told the story and they advised me to go to one of the radio stations there that was broadcasting. I then put it out on my own social media. I said somebody must have mistakenly picked it up. There’s nothing dramatic or traumatic. I don’t want any sensationalism about it.
"It’s unfortunate when they say 'robbed' and 'pilfered'. I don’t like that, that’s not the way it was," Fr Bryan said.
He believes the relic may have been moved by the divine intervention of "Carlo Acutis himself."
"Carlo Acutis probably wanted to go and bless somebody and that’s it. That’s all, there’s no more about it. It’s unfortunate. The main thing is we want to get it back," Fr Bryan added.
However, a Garda [Irish police] spokesman said: "There are no reports of any incidents matching this description on our records at this time."
The lock of hair is believed to have been donated to the Capuchin Franciscans by Carlo Acutis’ mother, Antonia Salzano Acutis. Fr Bryan said it was "not at all" a robbery and somebody may have picked it up and inadvertently wandered off with it. The lock of the boy’s hair was kept in a little black "relic box," just an inch-square in size, and the priest is praying hard for its return, "please God."
He said: "Perhaps the relic has given somebody consolation, and maybe now that is done, we can have it back to give consolation to a wider scope of people."
No firm date has yet been fixed for Blessed Carlo’s canonization. "We imagine because he is so popular they will need to clear the decks so the Pope can canonize him in Rome at some stage next year, sometime in the spring or early summer.
"It will be mega, it will be enormous. So many people have a great love for him. He’ll be the first millennial saint, a young boy, the saint of websites and the internet. He’s really a saint that young people can connect to and approach Jesus through," Fr Bryan said.
He will likely be proclaimed a saint during the 2025 Jubilee, which will make him the Church’s first-ever millennial saint.
Born to Italian parents in London in 1991, Carlo is formally known as "Blessed Acutis" but nicknamed "God’s influencer."
Carlo Acutis was a web designer who died from leukemia in 2006, at the age of just 15, in Monza, Italy. He was known for his devotion to Eucharistic miracles and Marian apparitions, which he cataloged on a website he designed.
The missing relic is one of two of "Blessed Acutis" in Ireland at present. A second, a small part of Carlo Acutis’ heart called the pericardium, toured various parishes in Dublin, Meath, and Laois earlier this month. The Vatican was contacted for comment but did not respond.
* This article was originally published on Extra.ie.
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