Full disclosure: I’m an atheist who is both fascinated and horrified by religion’s influence on society.
The May 23, 2024, edition of the New York Times had this: “Pope Francis clears the way for an Italian teenager to become the first millennial saint.”
Carlo Acutis had died of leukemia in 2006 at 15. He was known among Catholics for using the Internet to share his faith, a fine attribute.
Then things get weird. AFTER he died, his mother told The Times, people began attributing medical miracles to praying to her son.
Wait. A dead Italian teenager is responsible for healing a Brazilian child with a rare pancreatic condition? That was the first miracle cited by the Vatican.
The second one, qualifying Carlo for sainthood, was after a Costa Rican woman fell off a bike in Florence, had major brain surgery and then recovered after her mother visited Carlo’s tomb to pray. What?
Any mention of the talented medical experts guided by science who were actually responsible for causing the recovery in both cases? Nope.
Consider Bigfoot. The Loch Ness Monster. UFOs at Area 51. Chemtrails. Truly tall tales few believe, right? Yet, Rome proclaims a dead teen responsible for medical miracles and millions swallow it. Totally normal, right? Wrong.
The universe is a strange place, with crazy stuff we can’t explain happening ALL THE TIME. Praying to an unseen and unproven apparition to help find your keys is no more plausible than attributing cancer recovery to a dead person or believing a certain orange-haired grifter was chosen to lead the United States.
What the world needs now is more reliance on common sense and science and less on religious-based fiction and Christian nationalism if we’re truly going to move forward.
I’m Wester Wuori and it’s no miracle, but that’s my Perspective.
