Lenten Campaign 2025
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On January 3, 2025, Lola Rosique, a pediatrician from Spain, was watching a Christmas show with her family when she received a WhatsApp message. A mother at the school in Murcia (Spain) where her children study, who was also a patient of hers, was going through a dramatic moment. Her young son, Elías, had just nearly drowned in a swimming pool. He was unconscious in the hospital.
Spontaneously she began to pray to Blessed Carlo Acutis, to whom she feels very close. “I said to him, ‘Carlo, please, look at this family, what a tragedy! You have to do something!’” she tells Aleteia.
“I felt in my heart: take him the relic,” she recalls. She has a piece of clothing belonging to the young man, whom the Church will canonize next April.
Itinerant relic
For the last few months, Lola has been taking this relic of Carlo to people who are going through a difficult time, especially to the families of her children’s classmates.
A priest, Fr. Leandro Fernández, lent her the relic in the summer of 2022 when he administered the Anointing of the Sick to her after she was diagnosed with serious cancer. Carlo’s mother had sent Fr. Leandro the relic in gratitude for a picture of the young blessed he had painted for her church.
The priest was unaware that Lola had just visited Carlo Acutis’ tomb in Assisi with her family. There, after praying to the blessed for her family and for her health, she experienced an extraordinary sensation of spiritual and physical well-being, and the conviction that she would be cured.
Receiving that relic moved her deeply. Lola took a photo of it and shared it in her WhatsApp status, together with a holy card of Carlo Acutis and a prayer request. She asked people to pray for her improvement or healing through his intercession.
Many people from all over the world responded to her request. And this gave her strength during the difficult process of undergoing chemotherapy and two very aggressive surgeries.
“I still have after-effects, but every day I thank God and Carlo,” explains the Spanish pediatrician with a smile.
She continues to spread devotion to Carlo. As a result, several families claim to have experienced a great change in the way they deal with difficult problems.
In the ICU
After hearing the news of the drowning, she sent a message to Elías’s family asking if she could take the relic to them. The family appreciated the gesture and asked her to visit them in the ICU.
Lola went to the hospital and entered the intensive care unit where Elías was fighting for his life. She blessed the child with the relic, left it by the monitor, and prayed with the family. Elías’ mother, Maribel Galdo, placed the relic next to her son, along with other religious objects that people had brought to the hospital.
“The next day, Elías was eating a ham sandwich,“ exclaims Lola, convinced that it was the family’s faith that saved the child. “The Lord gave us the faith we needed to get through that moment,” says Maribel, happy that her son recovered so quickly and without any after-effects.
Inner call
Previously, in 2023, Lola had taken the relic to the family of Victoria, a girl with terminal cancer.
When her daughter told her about her classmate, the pediatrician began to pray for her. And she felt that Carlo was telling her, “You can’t keep the relic to yourself, you have to share it.” She resisted because she didn’t know the family and didn’t want to give them false hope, but the inner call persisted.
In the end, through a mutual friend, she offered the mother the chance to borrow Carlo’s relic for a few days, confident that it would bring them comfort. And the mother accepted it. The girl was on morphine and unable to get out of bed. She had been discharged so that she could die at home.
The next day, Victoria began to improve spectacularly, Lola remembers.
Victoria “gained nine pounds in a month. She started to eat, and she asked Carlo to intercede for her so she could go back to school. She was a hard worker, and she loved to draw.”
Heaven couldn’t wait
Lola recounts, “Her mother would say, ‘I don’t know how long it will last, but every minute with Victoria is a gift. This is a gift, whatever the duration.’”
It lasted a month. Shortly after the premiere in Murcia of the film about Carlo, “Heaven Can’t Wait,” Victoria’s condition worsened and she passed away.
“At the funeral home, her mother hugged me and said, ‘I can only be grateful for this last month with my daughter; heaven couldn’t wait for Victoria, just as for Carlo.”
The power of a relic
Lola says that the relic helps many people to have more faith. “There are many people involved in these things that have happened, who previously had no faith and who are suddenly getting closer to the Church,” she says.
For her, “the real miracle is no longer healing, but living the cross with a Christian meaning, seeing the beauty of the cross even if it’s difficult to understand, and understanding that everything is for the glory of God.”
And today we celebrate...