Carlo Acutis statue to serve    

as a model for students

Students and staff of St. Michael the Archangel School in Leawood gather around the new statue of Blessed Carlo Acutis after it was unveiled at the school and blessed by Father Brian Schieber, pastor of St. Michael. Parish and school leadership hope the lifelike figure will inspire students to live a life of faith like Acutis did before he passed away from leukemia at age 15. LEAVEN PHOTO BY JAY SOLDNER

by Moira Cullings
moira.cullings@theleaven.org

LEAWOOD — The authentic life of Blessed Carlo Acutis is a model for our times, according to leaders at St. Michael the Archangel Parish here.

“He loved Jesus, he loved sports, he loved soccer, he loved video games,” said Father Luke Doyle, associate pastor at St. Michael. “He was a normal kid who put Jesus first.

“So, it’s possible for any of us to do that.”

Acutis grew up in Italy and passed away from leukemia at age 15. Now, he has the potential to become the first-ever millennial saint.

To inspire the students of St. Michael the Archangel School with his example, the school commissioned Ferdinand Stuflesser 1875 — an Italian-based sculpting company — to create a lifelike statue of the teen.

It was unveiled to the school community on March 27.

“It’s beautiful,” said Father Doyle. “I think it’s a really incredible way that we can invite Carlo into our community — not just through prayer, but through having his representation, his likeness, in the school.”

Sisters Kelly Grace, Odilia-Thérèse and Lucia Maria Sol, of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and Mary, pull a cloth to reveal the new statue of Blessed Carlo Acutis at St. Michael the Archangel School in Leawood. LEAVEN PHOTO BY JAY SOLDNER

Sister Lucia Maria Sol, SCTJM, campus minister, led the unveiling ceremony, and pastor Father Brian Schieber blessed the statue, which features Blessed Acutis accompanied by one of his dogs, the Eucharist, a Bible and a rosary.

The sculpture is six-feet tall — the same height the teen was in real life — and made of wood except for his eyes, which are crystal. It took around six months to create.

The idea for the statue came about after a few members of the St. Michael staff visited the motherhouse of the Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and Mary in Miami, where they saw the community’s lifelike sculpture of Blessed Acutis.

“They commented on how powerful it is and how beautiful and instrumental Carlo is,” said Sister Lucia.

Last year, parish staff decided to commission their own version from the same sculpting company.

“Blessed Carlo is such a model of holiness for our time,” said Sister Lucia.

Father Brian Schieber and students of St. Michael the Archangel School in Leawood admire the school’s new statue of Blessed Carlo Acutis. LEAVEN PHOTO BY JAY SOLDNER

From the time he made his first Communion, Acutis attended daily Mass so he could receive the Eucharist, she said. He also prayed a daily rosary.

“From a young age, you could tell he knew his priorities,” said Sister Lucia. “He knew where the fountain of life was. He knew where authentic joy came from, and it’s the eucharistic heart of Jesus, our Blessed Mother, the saints.”

Acutis didn’t keep the faith to himself.

“He had compassion and empathy for others,” said Sister Lucia. “He made so many friends. He would go and feed the poor. He would be there for the suffering.

“He spent his life in service to others, bringing the joyful news of the Gospel.”

Acutis also used his talent for technology to document more than 130 eucharistic miracles, and his exhibit now travels around the world.

“St. John Paul II always said that the third millennium would raise up so many saints,” said Sister Lucia. “[Blessed Acutis] is a vivid and complete way of that.”

The statue of Blessed Carlo Acutis stands at six feet tall, the same height the teenager was in real life. LEAVEN PHOTO BY JAY SOLDNER

The campus minister believes Blessed Acutis’ profound faith amid suffering can be a model for students at St. Michael.

She hopes it will help them “understand that suffering, united with the suffering of Christ, bears so much fruit.”

“And that’s ultimately what makes us holy,” she continued. “It’s not just when happy moments are around or consolations, but the saints — and Carlo in this case — teach us how to lovingly and joyfully embrace suffering for the good of the world and the good of the church.”

Sister Lucia pointed out that the teen is still on the road to sainthood.

“And yet he has conquered the hearts of so many in our world today,” she said. “It’s just amazing.”

 

Five of the Medjugorje visionaries in the first year of the apparitions in 1981

 

Heroic WWII film is almost unbelievable, but it’s true!

Quiver Distribution

Theresa Civantos Barber - published on 04/12/24

A World War II heroine finally gets her due attention with a new feature film, 'Irena’s Vow.' This never-before-told story sounds wild but is based on fact.

It seems that every day we hear about a new book, movie, or TV series about World War II. What is it about that time period that so captures our interest?

Many of us living today had ancestors who fought in it, and it took place recently enough that it’s still well-remembered and heavily documented. 

But it’s more than mere proximity. The demarcation of good and evil feels so stark in World War II: Few wars had such a horrific evil hidden on one side. When the stakes are so high, no wonder storytellers return to this theme again and again. 

And World War II changed history: It feels personal, as we are still living out the consequences that affected us all. 

Whatever the reason, there is a seemingly endless demand for World War II stories, and we are quick to listen whenever a new one comes to light. 

A powerful untold story

One previously untold story of World War II will finally get its due attention with a new feature film, Irena’s Vow. It is the incredible true story of a Polish Catholic nurse who risked her life to help hide Jews persecuted by Nazi Germany during WWII. 

Irena’s story is so wild that it would hardly seem believable if it hadn’t actually happened.

Courtesy of Irena’s Vow

Irena Gut was just 19 when she was promoted to housekeeper in the home of a highly respected Nazi officer, and found out that the Jewish ghetto was about to be liquidated. 

Determined to help Jewish workers, she decided to shelter them in the safest place she could think of, which just happened to be the basement of the German major’s house! 

Over the next two years, Irena used her wit, humor, and courage to hide her friends until the end of the German occupation, concealing them amid countless Nazi gatherings, a blackmail scheme, and even keeping secret the birth of a child. 

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The power of faith

The best part is that it’s not some concocted Hollywood drama but a true story. 

Dan Gordon, screenwriter for Irena’s Vow, shared with Aleteia some of what led him to this amazing and unusual narrative:

Irena drew me to her story. Her story was neither something I read nor something I was told about. One evening I heard Irena speaking on a radio show [and] she had such a sense of pure faith… She was, after all, only 20 years old when it fell into her hands to save 12 Jews by hiding them in the basement of a German major without his knowledge. The idea was so outlandishly stupid that no one without perfect faith could have undertaken it. 

Courtesy of Irena’s Vow

That faith became clearest when one of the married Jewish women became pregnant. They had discovered a hiding place under the gazebo and because there were three married couples they created a space called ” The Honeymoon Suite.” Even in hiding, life went on. Love went on. Intimacy between married couples went on. When the woman became pregnant the Jews collectively decided it would be too dangerous to bring a baby into the world they now inhabited. The major would be sure to hear the baby cry and that would mean death for all of them. 

They asked Irena, who had been a student nurse, to go to the pharmacy to get what was needed for an abortion. Irene had seen a baby ripped out his mother’s arms and killed before the mother was killed as well. That is when she made her vow to God that if it ever came into her hands to save a life, she would. She didn’t so much oppose the abortion on religious grounds, though she was a devout Catholic. Her reasoning was somehow more innocent. Hitler was not going to get another Jewish baby. 

She was utterly and completely convinced that God would let no harm befall them because of this baby. Ultimately she convinced not only the mother, but also the Jews hiding in the basement to have that same faith. They did. When we did the play of Irena’s Vow, on opening night on Broadway, to thunderous applause, the man who began his life as that baby conceived in the hiding place, walked out onto stage. So, oddly, what drew me to Irene’s story had almost nothing to do with the Holocaust and everything to do with faith, nothing to do with death and everything to do with life.

The lasting consequences of Irena’s courage

Bringing home the incredible consequences of Irena’s courage, each screening will be accompanied by exclusive video footage featuring Jeannie Smith, Irena’s real-life daughter, and Roman Haller, the baby who was conceived and born in captivity.

Lila Rose reacted to a powerful scene in the film when Irena chose to protect the unborn baby’s life, against terrible odds:

Among all the World War II stories coming out this year, Irena’s Vow is the one to make sure to watch. Irena’s heroic faith and courage under unimaginable pressure is a story with great hope for our time.

 

John 6:22-29 Work for food that endures to eternal life

Still Life with Bible, painted by Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890), painted in October 1885, Oil on canvas © Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Gospel Reading

After Jesus had fed the five thousand, his disciples saw him walking on the water. Next day, the crowd that had stayed on the other side saw that only one boat had been there, and that Jesus had not got into the boat with his disciples, but that the disciples had set off by themselves. Other boats, however, had put in from Tiberias, near the place where the bread had been eaten. When the people saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they got into those boats and crossed to Capernaum to look for Jesus. When they found him on the other side, they said to him, 'Rabbi, when did you come here?' Jesus answered: 'I tell you most solemnly, you are not looking for me because you have seen the signs but because you had all the bread you wanted to eat. Do not work for food that cannot last, but work for food that endures to eternal life, the kind of food the Son of Man is offering you, for on him the Father, God himself, has set his seal.' Then they said to him, 'What must we do if we are to do the works that God wants?' Jesus gave them this answer, 'This is working for God: you must believe in the one he has sent.'

Reflection on the painting

Our painting by Vincent van Gogh is beautiful in its simplicity. He painted this canvas in October 1885. The Bible belonged to his father, who was a pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church in the Netherlands. Vincent and his father had a rather turbulent relationship. Six months before this canvas was painted, Vincent's father died, and so this painting of his father's Bible became Vincent's portrait of his father. The Bible represented everything he saw in his father: a man dedicated and devoted to his faith. The Bible lies open at the reading of Isaiah 53, which describes a servant of God as being '…despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain…' Despite Vincent's ambivalent feelings towards his own father and also towards organised religion, he always showed great respect for Christ himself, both in his painting and in the letters he wrote to his brother Theo. In front of the Bible, we see another book: Emile Zola's La joie de Vivre. Van Gogh was a great admirer of Zola's literary works, which had a profound impact on literature and society, blending scientific principles with literary realism to critique contemporary issues. Placing Zola's book in the painting served as a kind of antithesis to his father's Bible. Zola represented a fresh and modern way of perceiving the world realistically. Vincent had come to consider the Bible as being somewhat antiquated and looking at the past, whereas Zola was looking to the future. Hence the juxtaposition of these two books in our painting  became for Vincent symbolic of the past and the future. The third object we see in our painting is the candlestick with an extinguished candle, which represents his father's life which had ended six months before. This particular candle has been out a long time: there are no traces of smoke or of its having been lit recently. In today's Gospel reading, like in most other readings, Jesus is always pushing us to go beyond where we are and to hunger for 'the food that endures for eternal life'. This food is Scripture, this food is the Bible, just like the one depicted in our painting. The food is Christ himself. There is a great deal more to life than the satisfaction of our physical needs: we have also deeper, spiritual hungers and thirsts that we need to attend to if we are to live a truly balanced life and be at peace within ourselves. In the Gospel reading Jesus offers himself to us as the one who offers us the food that endures to eternal life... and we read all about Jesus in our Bibles.

by Father Patrick van der Vorst

 Shall we have another look at those wonderful reviews for 'Granny Barkes Fell in Woolworth's'?

Well yes, I think we shall...

Gene writes beautifully - something not always the case with authors of trail-blazing literary works.' [A.N. WILSON]

"The genius of James Joyce is alive and well and living amongst us. His name is Gene Vincent." [A.N. WILSON]

'I was enthralled. A new star has shot into the literary firmament. [ARIANNA HUFFINGTON]

 

THE HUFFINGTON POST

 

'Paedogate' Gets Worse For Harriet Harman As PIE Leader Tom O'Carroll Reveals New Details

Harriet Harman and Patricia Hewitt failed to take action to oust the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) because they "didn't want to rock the boat", its former chairman has claimed.

Tom O'Carroll said Labour's deputy leader and the former health secretary did not support PIE but "didn't even try" to cut its affiliation to the civil liberties organisation they worked at for the sake of their careers.

Ms Harman has said she has nothing to apologise for over the involvement of the National Council for Civil Liberties with the paedophile rights campaign but expressed "regret" that there had ever been a link between the two.

O'Carroll sat on an NCCL gay rights sub-committee in the late 1970s and said there had been no active attempt to remove him.

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Did Thatcher's Government Give Taxpayers' Money To Paedophile Group PIE?

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Really they didn't do much to oppose PIE's presence in my view because there were these other liberal forces, or radical forces, within NCCL.

"The support didn't come from Harman and Co but it was there. The Gay Liberation Front was very radical and at that time Harman and Patricia Hewitt couldn't just kick out PIE. Well, they could both try but they didn't even try and the reason they didn't try is they didn't want to rock the boat because their careers within NCCL depended on them not rocking the boat too much."

The former PIE chairman told the programme he never met Ms Harman but met Ms Hewitt briefly at a conference in Sheffield in 1978.

He said: "I spoke to her when we were just going up a floor or two in a lift and she was somewhat frosty.

"I said something to her, I think as a pleasantry, and she didn't take it that way. She said that I'd been rude to her afterwards, which I hadn't been.

"My impression was that she simply had great distaste for being in the same lift as me."

Former culture secretary Tessa Jowell said Ms Harman and her MP husband Jack Dromey, who also worked at NCCL in the 1970s, had been "completely consistent" in their opposition to PIE and insisted there was "not one shred of evidence that they gave any comfort to this revolting organisation".

She told Today: "There's no question of post-hoc justification here. The evidence shows how vigorous Jack Dromey was in his attack on the Paedophile Information Exchange.

"Harriet's work at NCCL didn't bring her into contact with them at all."

A Labour MP has called for an investigation into PIE after concerns that it could have received public money.

Tom Watson says he was contacted by a former civil servant who saw documentation suggesting the organisation received taxpayer funding under Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government.

"I was contacted by a former Home Office civil servant who told me that he saw a document that suggests the Paedophile Information Exchange got public money," he told the Daily Mail.

"The document was recommending approval for funding during the Thatcher government. My source, who does not wish to talk to the media, said it appeared to be a re-application for funds.

"He could not be certain whether or not it had been funded by a Labour government but he thought this was possible."

 

 

Vital questions for Detterling:

When did you become aware of the existence of the Paedophile Information Exchange?

Were you aware that the Paedophile Information Exchange was affiliated to the National Council for Civil Liberties?

If you were  aware of the existence of the Paedophile Information Exchange and aware that the Paedophile Information Exchange was affiliated to the National Council for Civil Liberties what steps did you take to disassociate the Left from endorsing the PIE? 

GENE