October 12 across 2,026 years of Catholic history

event · MONZA, Italy, October 12, 2006 AD

St. Carlo Acutis dies at fifteen, his organs too damaged to give

The Milan schoolboy fell ill ten days ago with what looked like flu, and he said he was offering his suffering for the Pope and the Church.

A wide, multi-storey hospital building seen across a parking area on a winter day, with bare trees, parked cars and patches of snow in the foreground. — San Gerardo Hospital in Monza, Italy, where St. Carlo Acutis died on October 12, 2006 AD.

Saint Carlo Acutis, a fifteen-year-old schoolboy from Milan, died at San Gerardo Hospital in Monza at 6:45 this morning, the day after bleeding in his brain caused by acute leukaemia left him brain-dead. His family wanted to give his organs to a young man waiting for a transplant, but the disease had damaged them too badly. The Church keeps his feast on this day.

A manuscript-style picture of a walled town with towers and steep roofs across a wide river, a long arched bridge on the left and a broken water mill in the stream, with English soldiers and archers under a red-cross banner firing two great guns from the near bank beside the ruins of burned houses. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of a 15th-century French manuscript illumination, from the paper's reference image based on Jeanne d'Arc a la porte Saint-Honore lors du siege de Paris (1429), Les Vigiles de Charles VII, fol. 66v (Anonymous illuminator; manuscript of Martial d'Auvergne, c. 1484, Bibliotheque nationale de France, Departement des Manuscrits, Francais 5054, fol. 66v) View source artwork.

event · ORLÉANS, October 12, 1428 AD

English besiege Orléans, and St. Joan's voices order her to raise it

An English army under the Earl of Salisbury laid siege to Orléans on October 12, 1428 AD, the last great town guarding the lands still loyal to the uncrowned Charles. At Domremy, Saint Joan of Arc, sixteen, had been sent home from Vaucouleurs in May and driven from her village by raiders allied with the English in July. During the siege her voices told her to go and raise it.

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More in this edition

A black-and-white photograph of an elderly cardinal in clerical dress, smiling slightly and holding a wide-brimmed hat in both hands.

place · VENICE, October 12, 1958 AD

Cardinal Roncalli leaves Venice for the conclave, expecting to come home

Pope Pius XII has died, and Cardinal Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, Patriarch of Venice and the future Saint John XXIII, left by train today for the conclave in Rome. A large crowd of Venetians went with him to the station. He expected to come back to his work in Venice; on October 28 the cardinals elected him Pope.

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An engraved portrait of a young Catholic priest with short dark hair, shown head and shoulders, wearing a cassock and cape with a clerical collar, looking slightly to the side.

feature · CIVITAVECCHIA, Papal States, October 1839 AD

Father Claret gives a stranger's silver to destitute Spaniards on deck

Father Anthony Mary Claret, a Catalan priest of thirty-one, crossed from Marseille to Civitavecchia this month in the cheapest place on the steamer Tancrède, on his way to Rome to volunteer for the missions. When an English gentleman and other passengers gave him money, he handed all of it to poor Spaniards on board and lived on bread soaked by a storm.

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A painting in the manner of an early Italian panel shows four barefoot women in grey-brown habits and dark veils under a stone arcade, the seated one at the centre reading a small sheet of parchment while the others lean in, with an oil lamp burning on a bracket by a doorway. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of an Umbrian panel painting in egg tempera on gold ground, from the paper's reference portrait based on Santa Chiara d'Assisi, fresco of St Clare and St Elizabeth of Hungary (Simone Martini, 1322-1326 AD, Cappella di San Martino, Lower Basilica of San Francesco, Assisi) View source artwork.

writings · ASSISI, Umbria, autumn 1220 AD

St. Francis's warning to keep poverty survives because St. Clare copied it

In the autumn of 1220 AD, Saint Francis of Assisi sent Saint Clare and her sisters at San Damiano a two-sentence note asking them to live always in poverty, and warning them never to leave it on anyone's teaching or advice. St. Clare turned down Pope Gregory IX's offer to release her from her vow in 1228 AD, and near the end of her life she copied the note into the rule she wrote for her sisters, the only reason it survives.

4 min read

Today in the Church

Monday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time

Saint of the day

Saint Carlo Acutis

A Milan schoolboy who went to Mass daily from his First Communion and built websites in his spare time, St. Carlo Acutis died of leukaemia at Monza in 2006 AD, aged fifteen. Pope Leo XIV canonised him in 2025 AD.

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On this day in the Church

1845 St. John Henry Newman and his Littlemore companions went together for the first time to Sunday Mass at the small Catholic chapel of St Clement's, Oxford.Source
1947 Eight months after the death of St. Josephine Bakhita, a healing took place in Italy that the Church later recognised as a miracle through her intercession, opening the way to her beatification.Source

Quote of the day

“I want to offer my suffering to the Lord for the Pope and for the Church. I don't want to go to Purgatory; I want to go straight to heaven.”

— St. Carlo Acutis, during his last illness, October 2006 AD, Cited in the homily for his beatification at Assisi, L'Osservatore Romano, "A youth of our time captivated by Christ" (October 2020)