In any case, it was not owing to my initiative that I first came in contact with the figure of Bernadette Soubirous, but to the initiative of my parents, whose prerogative it was to enroll me and my siblings in that school (though they themselves did not make much of the fact that they were doing so, except perhaps, in passing, to observe that it was a parochial school rather than a public school); and to the combination of chance and decision (again on the part of my parents) that had landed us in a town in a state in a region of the country where this school that was so connected to Bernadette, by its very name, happened to be.

Which I do not mean as a dig at the school itself (on the whole it was well-intentioned, sincere, and reflective of the era and the region in which I grew up, even if it had, as a consequence of that era and that region, lost something of its Catholic identity while remaining nominally Catholic)…no, which I do not mean as a dig at the school, but only as a way of communicating, and putting into perspective, how a person (in this case, myself) can take for granted a thing so obvious that the thing becomes hidden, to that person, by its very obviousness.

Possibly I learned, at that time, a little of Bernadette’s story and its significance, due to the fact that I attended a school named for the town where she lived (you’d be forgiven if you’d thought I most definitely would have learned about her), but I can’t remember paying much attention to it — to the fact that the school had a namesake, or to the question of what that namesake was. Certainly the school did not make a very big deal about it; there may or may not have been a picture of Bernadette somewhere on its grounds, or on a wall in one of its corridors. Our mascot was an eagle, and the emphasis of the administration and the student body, with respect to our athletic contests, our school spirit, our crosstown rivals, and so forth, was on, like, ‘Go Eagles’.

For example, I attended, in Minnesota, a Catholic high school called Lourdes, named for the village in the Pyrenees, in southern France, where, in 1858, Bernadette Soubirous experienced, at the age of fourteen, a series of Marian apparitions at a grotto beside a river not far from where she and her siblings and her parents, in reduced circumstances, lived in a one-room basement that had been formerly used as a jail.

So that they become one’s ‘favorite’ through one’s habitual or repeated acquaintance with them. Which may or may not be owing to one’s own initiative.

By which I mean, I suppose, brought by circumstance, chance, and the shape of one’s personality, into something like a continued encounter or ‘dialogue’ with the memory of them.

Bernadette Soubirous is probably my favorite, although, again, ‘favorite’ is not quite the right word. And, anyway, it is possible that one does not choose a favorite saint so much as find oneself in the orbit of their agency or influence.

Other saints to whom I have a special devotion are Bernadette Soubirous, Thérèse of Lisieux, Juan Diego, Faustina Kowalska, Joan of Arc, Jacinta Marto, Teresa of Ávila, Mary Magdalene, John the Beloved, Thomas Aquinas, Francis of Assisi, Augustine of Hippo and his mother Monica (who prayed for years, fervently, for her son’s conversion, when he lived for worldly things), Teresa of Calcutta, and Pope John Paul II.

A person who is a saint is a saint already, whether or not they are recognized as one.

Which I mention only to be accurate, and to avoid confusion, not to be fastidious or fussy.

Though, as I mentioned, he has not yet been canonically sainted, but has been beatified. So that his title, within the Church, is Blessed Carlo, not Saint Carlo.

He has become one of my favorite saints, by which I mean, I suppose, one of the saints I pray to most often, though when I say “pray to” I do not mean that I regard him as an end in himself (which is a misconception that often attaches itself to Catholics, and their belief in the ‘communion of saints’) but as an example of a life that is worthy of imitation, and as a soul who has intercessory power before Christ, in the Trinity.

He is often referred to as the first ‘millennial’ saint, because of the generation to which he belonged, and for his apparent normalcy in the externals of his life. He enjoyed video games, for instance, played soccer (though he wasn’t very good), and was an adept in computer programming.

Since Carlo’s death, and for reasons having less to do with his website than with the piety and faith that led him to create it (as one of his many projects and commitments), the cause for his sainthood has been initiated by the Church; and he already has been, at the time of this writing, beatified (the second to last step in the process).

There have been, apparently, more than one hundred of them, spanning the globe and the centuries. (That many, at least, that the Church has recognized).

An Italian teenager named Carlo Acutis, who died in 2006 of an acute form of leukemia, and who was especially interested in these miracles, created a website to document and describe them.

The blood type that is present in those instances where bleeding occurs, and that technology now allows us to examine, is, invariably, AB, which is the same blood type to be found on the Shroud of Turin.

But yes, there are on record a number of Eucharistic miracles, wherein a Communion host has bled, or has changed into human tissue (namely cardiac muscle), or has otherwise exhibited properties not explainable by science.

Which certainly we are in now.

Meaning, there will always be a ‘remnant’ of the faithful, regardless of how depleted, watered down, or effete the Church becomes, in the main; and this remnant will sustain Christendom in times of trial or dissipation.