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.
On December 8, 1991, Father Otty Ossa Aristizábal was celebrating Mass in the chapel of the shrine of Betania in Cúa and, during the consecration, saw the host bleed. The miraculous host is kept in the city of Los Teques, at the convent of the Augustinian Recollect Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, where it is permanently displayed for the faithful’s adoration and where many pilgrims also arrive from abroad every year. Many extraordinary events have occurred in connection with the host of the miracle, including one involving an American young man who filmed the miraculous host, while it was displayed for the faithful, pulsating like a heart.
This miracle occurred during Midnight Mass on December 8, 1991, at the Marian shrine of Finca Betania in Cúa, Venezuela. Father Otty, the shrine’s chaplain, describes the event as follows: «After consuming one of the pieces of the large host that I had divided into four parts, I placed the pieces back in the paten. Shortly afterward, I looked down at the paten and could not believe what I was seeing: one of the pieces of the host I had divided had a red stain, and a red substance was beginning to emerge from it, similar to the way blood flows from a wound. After Mass, I took the host and kept it safely in the sacristy of the shrine. The following day, at 6:00 in the morning, I went to look at the host and found that blood was still flowing from it, though it began to dry shortly afterward.
However, even today, the blood appears fresh. The strange thing is that the blood flowed only from one side of the host without staining the rest of the Eucharistic species.» Numerous pilgrims were present during Mass, and they immediately verified that the priest had no wounds from which the blood found in the host could have come. Furthermore, analyses showed that the priest’s blood did not match that of the host. The miraculous host was subjected to special studies commissioned by the then bishop of Los Teques, His Excellency Monsignor Pio Bello Ricardo, and the results confirmed that the blood was human blood, type AB positive, matching that found on the Shroud of Turin and in the host of the Eucharistic miracle of Lanciano.
Since then, the host has been venerated and worshipped by thousands of pilgrims coming not only from Venezuela but from all over the world. The miraculous host can be visited every day of the year, at any time, at the convent of the Augustinian Recollect Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Los Teques, in the chapel dedicated to perpetual adoration. A young faithful man from New Jersey, Daniel J. Sanford, who had gone on pilgrimage to the Augustinian convent to see the bleeding host, managed to film another miraculous event. Here is his account: «On November 12, 1998, I went on pilgrimage to Betania with a prayer group, and we were taken to see the miraculous host of Betania at the chapel of the Augustinian Sisters in Los Teques. Our spiritual director, Father Mazzarella, celebrated Mass. After the celebration, he opened the door of the tabernacle containing the host from the miracle. To my great astonishment, I saw that the host was as if engulfed in flames, and there was a pulsating heart bleeding at its center. I saw this for about thirty seconds or so, and then the host returned to normal. I managed to film part of this miracle with my video camera».
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