What Eucharistic miracles teach us about the Liturgy Wars

On Sunday, 7 September 2025, the Holy Father Leo XIV elevated Carlo Acutis to the dignity of the altar. Saint Carlo Acutis, together with Saint Pier Giorgio Frassati (also canonised by Pope Leo on the same day), is a true “pop saint”, deeply loved by younger people, thanks in part to his generational closeness. He died in Monza on 12 October 2006, at just 15 years old, due to a sudden and aggressive leukaemia. Saint Carlo stands as a magnificent witness of faith for our times. He knew how to suffer without ever losing sight of the purpose of his earthly existence, offering his pain to God “for the Pope and for the Church, so I won’t have to go through Purgatory and can go straight to Heaven.”

Saint Carlo Acutis is also known for his boundless love for the Eucharist, which he called “my highway to Heaven”. His Eucharistic devotion was so profound that it led him to design and create a website dedicated to the major Eucharistic miracles — around 135 of them — from all over the world.

The canonisation of this young Italian, deeply in love with Jesus in the Eucharist, is providential for this precise historical moment in the Catholic Church — a Church torn, among other things, by what some commentators have called a “liturgical war”. A true conflict, if one considers the tensions, mutual accusations, exclusions, and even acts of censorship that have marked the liturgical debate over the past decades.

For those unfamiliar with the issue: everything originates with the liturgical reform of Pope Paul VI in 1969, which introduced the new Roman Missal in line with the Second Vatican Council. This change, though intended to promote active participation by the faithful, was experienced by many as a break with Tradition.

In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI sought to heal this rift with the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, liberalising the use of the 1962 Missal and hoping thereby to foster liturgical peace.

However, in 2021, Pope Francis, through the motu proprio Traditionis Custodes, significantly restricted the use of the Old Rite, arguing that its spread threatened ecclesial unity.

More recently, a scoop by journalist Diane Montagna revealed that the consultation of bishops, cited as the basis for Traditionis Custodes, did not reflect a clear desire to limit the Old Rite. This revelation has fuelled further controversy and suspicion, deepening the divide between the two liturgical souls of the Church.

The galaxy of those who defend the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite is itself highly diverse: it ranges from those who claim the new form is imperfect, harmful, or even invalid, to those who believe the two forms can coexist or mutually enrich one another, and even to figures like the Ratzingerian Cardinal Kurt Koch, who hope for the emergence of a new liturgical reform — one that draws a bit from each rite, creating a sort of hybrid form.

The Eucharist, strictly speaking, is itself ordinarily a miraculous event: the elements used in the sacrifice — bread and wine — undergo a change of substance after the priest pronounces the consecratory formula according to the Church’s intention. They become the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ, while retaining the accidents of bread and wine (that is, their geometric form, colour, taste, smell, and other qualities perceptible to our senses). Transubstantiation is, in itself, something miraculous, because it occurs solely through direct divine intervention, without mediation by the laws of nature.

A Eucharistic miracle is said to occur when, beyond the ordinary transubstantiation, the accidents are also transformed — either partially or totally. That is, when the Eucharistic species — which by nature would be subject to rapid decay, parasites, or mould — remain preserved for long periods, incorrupt and fresh; or when the Divine Presence of the Lord is miraculously recognised by someone or something unexpected (for example, an animal); when certain chosen souls receive the Eucharist in a miraculous way; or when a mysterious power emanates from the Eucharistic species, capable of vanquishing entire armies or petrifying profaners in an instant. However, in most such cases, the consecrated host or wine becomes a piece of flesh or living blood.

In these Eucharistic miracles where the presence of flesh or blood has been observed, scientific analysis has confirmed that the blood type is AB — the same found on the Holy Shroud of Turin and the Sudarium of Oviedo — and that it is the blood of a person in the throes of agony.

A Catholic does not base their faith on Eucharistic miracles, nor are they obliged to believe in their authenticity. These miracles serve to strengthen the wavering faith of priests or laypeople and to affirm the Catholic dogma of Eucharistic transubstantiation. From 750 A.D. onward — when the first recorded miracle is said to have occurred in Lanciano, Italy — these events have been intrinsically tied to this dogma. Without it, Eucharistic miracles lose their meaning and purpose.

The attention Saint Carlo Acutis gave to the phenomenon of Eucharistic miracles is providential, as it brings to light an argument which, though not central, is highly authoritative in countering those who deny the validity of Pope Paul VI’s liturgical reform. In fact, since the Mass was reformed by Pope Paul VI, all Eucharistic miracles have occurred exclusively during Novus Ordo celebrations. Moreover, if we closely examine the history of these events — limiting ourselves to those approved by ecclesiastical authority — we find that they have, in a certain sense, “followed” the very process of reform initiated by the Second Vatican Council: disappearing from the Old Rite as it was phased out as the ordinary form of the Roman Rite, and appearing in the Novus Ordo as it became that ordinary form.

The last known miracle to have occurred within the Old Rite is believed to date back to the mid-1950s, in Bui-Chu, Vietnam. According to reports, a communist soldier fired at a tabernacle and was instantly struck down, left motionless like an inanimate object. The event was documented in L’Osservatore Romano on 16 December 1954.

On 25 July 1969, in San Mauro La Bruca, in the province of Salerno, Italy, a ciborium filled with consecrated hosts was stolen by sacrilegious thieves and later found intact in a nearby alley. Since then, the hosts have never decayed and remain available for adoration by the faithful who visit the local church.

The rite used for the consecration of those hosts followed the bilingual ad experimentum Missal approved by the Italian Episcopal Conference in March 1965. This Missal included several transitional elements that would later characterise the Novus Ordo Missal, which came into effect in November 1969.

All Eucharistic miracles that have occurred since the liturgical reform of Pope Paul VI and have been approved by Church authority have taken place during Masses celebrated according to the Novus Ordo form — beginning with the apparition, on Good Friday in 1974, of the Face of the Lord, which lasted for about forty-five minutes on the ciborium of the small chapel in the village of Castelnau-de-Guers, in southern France, and was witnessed by countless observers.

This circumstance cannot be considered accidental. If the new rite were invalid or displeasing to God, it would be impossible for the Lord to perform miracles within it — miracles whose very purpose is to confirm faith in the Real Presence.

Nor can one reasonably claim that such events are the result of demonic deception: Satan has no power to manipulate the public and official prayer of the Church, which is approved and safeguarded by legitimate authority. Were this the case, the devil would be elevated to a kind of cooperator in the sacraments — a notion that is theologically absurd and even blasphemous.

It follows that the new form, while acknowledging the urgent need for an authentic reform that restores a greater emphasis on its sacrificial dimension, is valid, fruitful, and legitimate. It is the liturgy of the Catholic Church, in which Christ truly becomes present. Eucharistic miracles are a divine confirmation — not a retrospective endorsement of human opinions. The Lord could never place His seal upon a rite that is spiritually harmful or even invalid. This is the greatest reassurance for our faith. If the Lord is truly present and makes Himself visible through such wonders, who are we to judge the goodness of that rite, or even to claim it is harmful?

These prodigies should not be interpreted as a sign of God’s disdain for the Old Rite, which remains venerable and rich in holiness. Rather, they signify that the Lord does not reject the New Rite, and that He wishes to reassure the faithful that, despite controversies and confusion, He remains truly present in the Eucharist celebrated in both forms.

The lesson Eucharistic miracles offer us, then, is this: beyond liturgical disputes, Christ is always faithful to His Church and never abandons those who seek Him with a sincere heart. True liturgical peace will not arise from partisan opposition, but from the authentic adoration of the Lord truly present under the Eucharistic species.

Saint Carlo recognised this — and with his prayers, a generation of Catholics will continue to do so.

Photo credit: St. Bernadette Catholic Church, AZ

‍