Brazil's bishops move the memorial of St. Carlo Acutis to October 13

The National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (CNBB), the country's counterpart of the USCCB, has decided that the liturgical memorial of St. Carlo Acutis, canonized on September 7, 2025, will be celebrated in Brazil on October 13, 2026. October 12, the usual date for his memorial, is the solemnity of Our Lady Aparecida, the patroness of Brazil. The CNBB said the celebration may take place on the new date "in the particular church."

Holy See approval still pending

The bishops formally requested the change in April this year, at the CNBB's 62nd General Assembly. The change still needs approval from the Holy See's Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.

The CNBB's Episcopal Commission for the Liturgy said that for now the celebration is to be understood as taking place in the particular church, especially in parishes that already have St. Carlo Acutis as their patron or where devotion to him is established. The commission added that "it is not yet possible to confirm the extension of this optional memorial to the whole country."

In the commission's view, the short time since Acutis's life and canonization calls for a longer period of reception in the Church, so that the reach of his witness in the life of the Church can be weighed with some distance. Devotion to the new saint can continue to be promoted through churches and shrines dedicated to him, and through pilgrimages and pastoral initiatives aimed primarily at young people.

Celebrations in parishes and shrines

In São Paulo, the St. Carlo Acutis University Parish, at the Centro Universitário Católico Ítalo Brasileiro, will mark its patron's feast on October 13 with a 6 p.m. Mass celebrated by the auxiliary bishop of Santo Amaro, Dom Marcelo Antonio da Silva.

The Shrine of Our Lady Aparecida and St. Carlo Acutis in Campo Grande, in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, will commemorate both saints on October 12. It is the first shrine in the world dedicated to St. Carlo Acutis and the site of the miracle that opened the way to his beatification: the healing of Matheus Vianna, a boy with an annular pancreas, who recovered after praying before a relic of Carlo on October 12, 2013.