Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Apr 9, 2022 / 06:00 am

The U.S. bishops recently welcomed a relic of Blessed Carlo Acutis. It is the teenager’s pericardium, or the sac that protected his heart.

“I now bring to you the relic of the pericardium, which is the membrane that surrounds the heart of a new blessed,” Archbishop Domenico Sorrentino of Assisi-Nocera Umbra-Gualdo Tadino said April 7.

Sorrentino presented the relic to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) for the national Eucharistic Revival, a multi-year initiative by the bishops to foster devotion in Christ’s real presence.

The U.S. bishops will house the relic for one year “for a pilgrimage of faith and sanctity for all, especially for young people,” Sorrentino said.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York received the relic on behalf of the USCCB during a Mass at St. Rita of Cascia – St. Pius V’s Church in the Bronx.

Sorrentino concluded, “I’m going to end with [what] Carlo comes to teach us, [which] is a friendship with Jesus, a real friendship where Jesus becomes all in our lives.”

Acutis, an English-born Italian Catholic, used technology to spread devotion to the Eucharist before he died in 2006 at the young age of 15 from leukemia. Beatified in 2020, he is a patron for the revival.

In a press release Friday, the USCCB announced that there will be opportunities for Catholics to venerate the relic. This information will later be released at the website for the revival.