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 in the World, from which this text is taken.
On April 25, 1356, in Macerata, a priest whose name is unknown was celebrating Mass in the small chapel of the church of Saint Catherine, owned by Benedictine nuns.
During the breaking of the bread, before Communion, the priest began to doubt the real presence of Jesus in the consecrated host.
It was precisely as he was breaking the host that, to his great dismay, he saw a large stream of blood pour from it, staining part of the linen and the chalice placed on the altar.
In Macerata, in the cathedral church of Saint Mary of the Assumption and Saint Julian, beneath the altar of the Most Blessed Sacrament, the relic of the «bloodstained corporal» can be venerated. The same church also preserves a contemporary parchment describing the miracle.
The historian Ferdinando Ughelli also mentions this miracle in his 1647 work Italia sacra and describes how, since the 14th century, «the corporal was carried in solemn procession through the city, enclosed in a silver crystal urn, with the participation of all Picenum». All the documents nevertheless agree in their description of how the miraculous events unfolded. During Mass, an anonymous priest was seized by serious doubts about the reality of transubstantiation and, when he broke the large host, he saw blood dripping from it, which ran down and stained the corporal and the chalice beneath it.
The priest immediately informed Bishop Niccolò da San Martino, who ordered the bloodstained linen relic to be taken to the cathedral and instituted a formal canonical process.
In 1494, one of the first Confraternities in honor of the Most Blessed Sacrament was established in Macerata, and it was here that the pious practice of the Forty Hours began in 1556. Every year, on the occasion of the Feast of Corpus Christi, the corporal bearing the miracle is carried in procession behind the Blessed Sacrament.
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