Scottdale Couple promoting a new saint

By Maryann Gogniat Eidemiller
Contributing Writer
Photo by Richard Dedo 

SCOTTDALE – Dr. William Ryckman and his wife, Mary, of Scottdale, were excited in July when Pope Francis announced that Blessed Carlo Acutis of Italy would be canonized as a saint in 2025.  

But they weren’t surprised.

Since 2008, the couple has been taking a display, “The Eucharistic Miracles Recorded by Carlo Acutis,” to churches to raise awareness of the miracles and of the cause of Carlo, who spent the last years of his short life documenting them on a website. The teenager, who died from leukemia on Oct. 12, 2006, at the age of 15, will be the Church’s first millennial saint. He had an intense love of the Eucharist, and his subsequent ministry reached countless people through its online presence.  

“Pope Francis said that he wanted to fast track Carlo (to canonization) to bring young people back to the Church,” Dr. Ryckman said. “This young man is so strong.”The Ryckmans are parishioners of St. Joseph Parish in Everson. They  learned about Eucharistic miracles when they accompanied Diocesan youth to World Youth Day in 2008.  While in Australia, they learned from Father Alejandro Pezet of Buenos Aires that in August 1996, a priest there put a fallen communion host into water to dissolve it, then three weeks later found it intact and with a red spot. He turned it over for an investigation by a group that included Auxiliary Bishop Jorge Bergoglio, now Pope Francis.

Several scientific examinations determined that the specimen was tissue from a human heart.  

“We knew we had to do something,” Dr. Ryckman said about what they learned.

They left Australia with their hearts on fire for a new ministry. Back  home, they pushed ahead, not knowing how far this would take them and how deeply they would become involved.

 “When we first started this, we had no idea who Carlo really was,” Mrs. Ryckman said. 

After finding out more, they contacted a printer in Oregon who had made displays for others based on Carlo’s research, and they ordered a set of 158 panels.

Their exhibit attracts small crowds and large, as many as 2,500 to one this year in Virginia. Visitors want to learn about the Eucharistic miracles that span several centuries, and about Carlo.

“The young people are really interested,” Mrs. Ryckman said. “When they see Carlo’s picture with him in his soccer jacket, jeans and sneakers, they’ve said, ‘He could be my friend,’ and I say well, he certainly could be.”

Carlo, the son of Andrea Acutis and Antonia Salzano, was a kind-hearted and precocious child who taught himself advanced computer skills that enabled him to build his website. His devotion to the Eucharist began at his First Holy Communion, and he also became devoted to Mary and the rosary. Yet he was an ordinary child who played sports and musical instruments and loved his pet dogs and cats.

The Archdiocese of Milan opened a cause for his canonization six years after his death, and he was named Servant of God in 2013. Pope Francis declared him Venerable in 2018.

The first miracle attributed to his intercession involved a boy in Brazil who was cured of a pancreatic defect. That led to Carlo’s beatification as Blessed.

Pope Francis recognized the second miracle in May, one of a Costa Rican woman who was healed from a brain hemorrhage.     

There have been alleged healings for people who have been to the exhibits and prayed for Blessed Carlo’s intervention. The Ryckmans have the loan of a first class relic (strands of Carlo’s hair), and visitors have touched prayer cards to the relic to create third class relics.

“One couple’s daughter had stage 4 cancer, and what’s interesting about this is that she’s an agnostic,” Dr. Ryckman said. “They took the prayer card home and begged her to please pray the prayer every day.”

She did, and scans showed that the cancer was gone.

Dr. Ryckman is retired, and his wife is a retired nurse. They’re cutting back on taking exhibits to distant locations and are passing on that traveling commitment to a couple in the Diocese of Pittsburgh.

The Ryckmans are now scheduling their ministry more locally and regionally. Soon, the story they’ll tell about Carlo will continue with the next chapter of how an ordinary and extraordinary teenager joined the communion of saints.