Blessed Carlo Acutis had conceived and created a beautiful traveling exhibition on Eucharistic Miracles. This exhibition continues to tour Italy and the world; all the Eucharistic miracles featured in the exhibition have been collected in the book Eucharistic Miracles Around the World, from which this text is taken.
In 1412, the then prior of the Basilica of Santa Maria in Bagno di Romagna (FC), Father Lazzaro of Verona, was celebrating Holy Mass when he was assailed by strong doubts about the real presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.
He had just pronounced the words of consecration over the wine when it transformed into living blood and began to boil, overflowing from the chalice and spilling onto the corporal.
Father Lazzaro, deeply moved and repentant, confessed to the faithful present at the celebration his disbelief and the astonishing miracle that the Lord had performed before his eyes.
In Bagno di Romagna, in the Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta, the relic of the Eucharistic miracle of the “Sacred linen soaked in blood” is preserved. The historian Fortunio describes the miracle in his notable work Annales Camaldulenses: “The year 1412 was under way. The Camaldolese abbey of Santa Maria in Bagno (then a priory) was governed by Father Lazzaro, who was of Venetian origin. One day, while he was celebrating the divine Sacrifice, his mind was seized by a powerful doubt, through the work of the devil, concerning the real presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. Suddenly, he saw the sacred species of wine begin to boil, overflow from the chalice, and spread over the corporal in the form of living, pulsating blood, leaving the corporal soaked. It is impossible to describe his emotion or the disturbance of mind that overcame him at that moment, confronted with such a stunning event. Weeping, he turned to those present, confessing his deep disbelief and the prodigy that had just taken place before his eyes.”
The monk Lazarus was later transferred to Bologna as chaplain of the Camaldolese women’s monastery of Santa Cristina, where he died in 1416. The Camaldolese administered the Parish of Bagno with varying fortunes until the Napoleonic suppression in 1808; since then, the Basilica Parish of Santa Maria Assunta, after being administered for a short period by the Diocese of Sansepolcro, definitively became part of the Diocese of Cesena in 1975.
In 1912, Cardinal Giulio Boschi, Archbishop of Ferrara, had the fifth centenary of the miracle celebrated, followed by a conference on Eucharistic studies. In 1958, His Excellency Domenico Bornigia commissioned the University of Florence to carry out a chemical analysis of the stains on the miracle’s corporal, which confirmed that they were of blood.
The basilica contains a colored and extremely rare 15th-century wood carving called the “Madonna of the Blood,” located in the third chapel on the left. This image is so called because, according to Don Benedetto Tenaci, abbot of Bagno and an eyewitness to the miracle, on May 20, 1498, the icon shed blood from its left arm.
Every year, during the Feast of Corpus Christi, the corporal is carried in procession through the city streets and is displayed every Sunday during the thermal season, which runs from March to November, at the Mass celebrated at 11:00 a.m.
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