By Simone Orendain, OSV News
CHICAGO (OSV News) — When a Chicago resident ran into a young man in Assisi, Italy, holding his piece of mosaic art — a rendering of the famous Blessed Carlo Acutis portrait, made of more than 1,000 toy pieces — she said she felt compelled to request a second version for her home parish named after the soon-to-be saint.
Kelly Legamaro’s chance meeting with 25-year-old Johnny Vrba happened in late April, when Blessed Carlo, who will be the first millennial saint, was scheduled to be canonized April 27. But less than a week before that date, on April 21, Pope Francis died, and the canonization was postponed.
The meeting was outside Bishop Domenico Sorrentino of Assisi-Nocera’s home. Blessed Carlo’s body is entombed in the Church of St. Mary Major in Assisi.
Vrba carried the 3-by-4-foot mosaic of the smiling teenager that, for his own birthday, he had hoped to give to Carlo’s mother, Antonia Acutis, on the occasion of the canonization. But with the pope’s death, all canonization related events were halted. It is currently housed at the Vatican’s youth center, Centro San Lorenzo.
“They talked to Bishop (Sorrentino) for two hours,” said Vrba of Legamaro and her husband. “I talked to (the) bishop for two minutes, and in those two minutes, Kelly was convicted (about) the piece and then commissioned this one, which is behind me currently.”
This second version was in front of the altar for an unveiling and blessing inside the sweltering St. Hedwig church building of Blessed Carlo Acutis Parish in northwest Chicago July 23.
The portrait of Blessed Carlo with his head tilted to the left is a collage of mostly plastic toy soldiers, all facing the left side of the teen’s forehead where a tiny bloodied figurine of Jesus on the cross sits with a Mary figure facing it.
“The culture that represents people that in today’s day and age (are) pointing their weapons, all at Jesus, every single gray, black and white figure, saying, ‘Crucify him, crucify him.’ And the Christians that are going against the grain, that are going against the culture, are all of the colored figures, any figure that has color. And there’s exactly 163,” Vrba explained to OSV News.
Among the colored figurines is a tiny Pikachu, the yellow electrified mouse hero of Pokémon, which was Blessed Carlo’s favorite video game “in moderation (one hour a day, weekly),” he quickly clarified.
Vrba, originally from Geneva, Illinois, said the number represents the 163 Eucharistic miracles that Blessed Carlo researched and documented on a website he created that is dedicated to the miracles.
Carlo, who died of leukemia when he was 15 in 2006, developed a strong devotion for the Eucharist when he was a small child and asked to have his first holy Communion when he was 7. From that day forward he never missed daily Mass and, of course, Sunday Mass. At the same time, he became a self-taught computer programmer and by the time he was 11, started work on the Eucharistic miracles project.
Vrba said he first heard about Carlo Acutis from a friend one year ago. He became absorbed in the future saint’s story, reading, watching videos and listening to podcasts about him. And when Vrba saw some of Chicago protest artist Roger J. Carter’s mosaic pieces of iconic African American political figures — some made of toy soldier figurines — “I said, ‘Wow, maybe instead of using this for what he was using it for, use it for the Lord.'”
He said, “When I went to World Youth Day in 2023, I was pierced when I saw millions of pilgrims in Lisbon (Portugal), kneeling, and I knew. It’s either all or nothing. It’s either Jesus, body, blood, soul and divinity, or it’s not. And it is, as a matter of fact. And so Carlo having a place where people can come and discover all of the incredible miracles, that really touched my soul, because Carlo used his gifts, which were computer programming to make that website.”
Vrba, a Denver-based tech start-up founder who creates multimedia art, was struck by how Blessed Carlo “is very relatable to” young people for his “ordinary exterior life,” in which the young man made videos with friends and his cats and dogs, played soccer and traveled because “he was a boy, at the end of the day.”
All of these aspects and more about his life and the two miracles attributed to him are depicted throughout the mosaic. The first miracle involved a young Brazilian boy who was completely healed from a rare congenital disease of the pancreas. The second involved the recovery of a university student in Florence, Italy, who had suffered a serious head injury when she fell off her bicycle in July 2022, and suffered a serious head injury.
A red cable running from Blessed Carlo’s head, which has a motherboard, to his heart, another motherboard, depicts a fusion of faith and reason that Vrba said is essential to living a Christian life.
The blessed was also instrumental in the coming together of the two churches that now make up the Blessed Carlo Acutis Parish, according to its pastor, Resurrectionist Father Ed Howe.
He told OSV News that in 2020, when a significant number of churches in the Archdiocese of Chicago experienced sometimes contentious mergers, parishioners at St. Hedwig and St. John Berchmans picked the name of the newly beatified teen. He was declared “Blessed” by Pope Francis on Oct. 10, 2020.
When his canonization was announced in May 2024, they came together to plan and hold multiple events related to the canonization.
“Because sometimes through a merger, some people would stay at their respective church and not mix with the other church. So a merger, hopefully, is also a point of bringing people together from both communities, and Carlos Acutis has been instrumental in that,” he said.
Father Howe said he had never seen anything like the mosaic, which he described as filled with “tremendous detail” about Blessed Carlo’s life that parishioners can learn even more about through a QR code.
Legamaro said she and her husband commissioned the piece for $10,000 plus $700 for materials and travel.
“It’s so worth it because kids can learn in a different way, in a modern way. That’s going to mean something to them. Today. Like (from) a kid in jeans, in a backpack like them, to know that they can balance social media and the internet, with God. That’s very relatable,” she and her husband, Michael Legamaro, told OSV News at the unveiling of the mosaic at the parish, which is the only one in the U.S. (so far) bearing Blessed Carlo’s name.
Legamaro, a lifelong Catholic, said she had a conversion when she was struck by, and developed a deep devotion to, the Real Presence, after studying panels of Blessed Carlo’s Eucharistic miracles exhibit traveling the world, which stopped by the parish last year.
“Miracle after miracle, country after country, and I just felt Jesus in that moment through Carlo,” she said. “And ever since, I’ve not stopped following these missions that I’m hearing, right? ‘Go to Rome. Go to the canonization.’ And that’s how I got led to Johnny. I don’t understand it, but I’m calling it the grace wave that I’m riding, of Carlo.”
Blessed Carlo Acutis is scheduled to be canonized along with Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati on Sept. 7.
Simone Orendain writes for OSV News from Chicago.
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