Cathedral parishioner credits God, the Eucharist and St. Carlo Acutis’s intercession for healing
Went to Rome twice to attend saint’s canonization
Colette Tellman was grateful to still be alive, but she didn’t mind asking for more.
She’s now convinced that God granted her a favor through the intercession of Carlo Acutis, a recently canonized saint who promoted devotion to the Most Blessed Sacrament before his death at age 15.
“Every day when I wake up, I take a deep breath and thank God for my healing,” said Mrs. Tellman, a member of Cathedral of St. Joseph Parish in Jefferson City.
She gave testimony to members of the Cathedral Parish’s Ladies Auxiliary on Nov. 14 about how she had contracted COVID in 2021.
“I survived, but only by the grace of God,” she stated.
The virus caused irreparable damage to her lungs, compounding the asthma she’d had her entire life.
“Each breath was a struggle,” she recalled. “My vocal cords were damaged from the severe coughing.”
She could barely speak, let alone sing.
She suffered other effects of the virus: loss of hearing, displaced ribs from the coughing, heart palpations and issues with her thyroid gland.
She used several inhalers a day and consulted with doctors but never seemed to get better.
Despite all of this, she decided to make a pilgrimage with Catholic evangelizer Matthew Kelly and about 700 other people to Fatima, Portugal, and Lourdes, France, in October 2024.
“Matthew was having a retreat for those who joined his International Eucharistic Consecration Society and had taken part in the 33 Day Consecration to the Eucharist,” said Mrs. Tellman. “The purpose of the retreat was to consecrate ourselves, our families, our parishes and the whole world to the Eucharist.”
Both destinations were sites of Church-sanctioned apparitions of the Blessed Mother to children at critical times in history.
She appeared and spoke to St. Bernadette Soubirous 14 times at Lourdes in 1858.
She appeared and spoke to Saints Jacinta and Francisco Marto and Servant of God Lucia dos Santos six times in 1917.
Both locales attract many thousands of Catholics each year to worship Jesus and honor his Blessed Mother.
“Please, Jesus!”
While in Portugal, the group went to Mass at St. Stephen Church in Santarem — site of a Church-authenticated Eucharistic miracle.
It was one of the miracles that St. Carlo Acutis, the first canonized saint of the millennial generation, had disseminated on a website to promote belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
Mrs. Tellman sat at the end of a pew near the main aisle of the church and could see the monstrance in a tabernacle at the very top of the high altar.
“In looking around the church prior to the entrance procession, I saw a picture of Carlo Acutis standing in front of the church,” she recalled. “I thought, ‘how appropriate to have this picture there, since he created a website cataloging all the Eucharistic miracles in the world.’”
The Eucharistic miracle in Santarem took place in 1266, when the host turned to human flesh and blood during Mass.
The miraculous substance can still be seen in a monstrance in the church today.
Mrs. Tellman knew that the necessary miracles attributed to God through St. Carlo’s intercession had been documented and verified, and that Pope Francis was planning to declare him a saint sometime in 2025.
“When the entrance procession started, the door of the tabernacle swung open so you could see the Eucharistic miracle very clearly,” she recalled.
The priest who preached the homily talked about miracles and how he had been healed while in the seminary.
“At one point in his homily,” Mrs. Tellman recalled, “he got bold in his speech and pounded his fist on the ambo with each of the following statements: ‘This is the place of miracles! This is where you can be healed! All you have to do is ask!’”
Mrs. Tellman felt like the priest was speaking directly to her.
She turned to look at the picture of St. Carlo Acutis and asked for his intercession.
She then turned to the monstrance holding the Eucharistic miracle and said “Please, Jesus!”
“At that moment,” she testified, “I perceived something like a ball of light streaming from that monstrance. I couldn’t actually see it, but I felt it enter my chest, and I felt my lungs expand like a balloon.”
For the first time in nearly three years, she could breathe freely.
“Not only were my lungs healed, but also my vocal cords,” she said.
From that moment forward, she has only needed her inhalers once, due to allergies.
Shocked by her restored health, she returned in thanksgiving that evening to take part in a candlelight Rosary procession.
She couldn’t help thinking, “Why me?”
“No one is worthy of God’s love, but he loves us freely and wants us to be healed, whether physically or spiritually,” she said. “All we have to do is ask!”
Later in the pilgrimage, she joined a group of people who prayed the Stations of the Cross while following a steep mountain path near Lourdes.
“This is where I received my affirmation,” she recalled. “So many struggled with the climb. Not me. I didn’t even get winded.”
Witness to history
Filled with gratitude, Mrs. Tellman decided to travel to Rome for St. Carlo’s canonization Mass, which was scheduled to take place this year on Divine Mercy Sunday — a week after Easter Sunday.
“And I will be singing the praises of our loving God!” she proclaimed on April 15.
She was scheduled to leave on Easter Monday, which turned out to be the day Pope Francis died.
The canonization was postponed, but Mrs. Tellman decided to make the trip anyway.
Late on day after she arrived in Rome, she and a group of fellow pilgrims walked to St. Peter’s Basilica to pay their respects to Pope Francis.
After doing so, they walked through the Jubilee Door, which is only open during a Jubilee Year.
Two days later, they attended the pope’s Funeral Mass in St. Peter’s Square.
“I have never seen so many people packed so close together as when we were in line waiting to get through the four security checkpoints,” said Mrs. Tellman.
She wasn’t close to the altar, but she could see all the ancient, beautiful rituals on a large-screen television.
The next day, the pilgrims visited Pope Francis’s burial place in St. Mary Major Bascilica in Rome.
The following days involved tours of the city and visits to many churches and holy sites, then a trip to Assisi.
“The last church we went to was St. Maria Maggiore,” said Mrs. Tellman. “This is where the sarcophagus of Carlo Acutis is located.”
“I had purchased some medals and a picture of him and touched them to his sarcophagus,” she recounted. “He is in a side chapel, so I went back through to the main chapel and knelt on the stone floor and prayed my Rosary in view of him. This whole pilgrimage culminated in my spending a half-hour in his presence. It was glorious!”
In God’s time
Pope Leo XIV announced that he would canonize St. Carlo Acutis and St. Pier Georgio Frassati on Sept. 7.
Mrs. Tellman had already signed up to make a pilgrimage to Greece.
After thinking about it, she decided to rearrange her flights, leave two days early and return to Rome for the canonization.
She left her hotel at 6 a.m. the following morning and walked to St. Peter’s Square.
There were only two checkpoints this time. Mrs. Tellman was near the front of the line and got to sit in a chair for the Mass.
Pope Leo came out to speak to the people before the Mass began.
The canonization was beautiful, joyful and reverent.
“I could see Carlo’s mother and father,” said Mrs. Tellman. “His twin siblings who were born exactly four years to the day after his death were there, and his brother did one of the readings.”
She also saw relatives of St. Pier Georgio Frassati.
After Mass, Pope Leo traveled through St. Peter’s Square in the Popemobile.
Mrs. Tellman stayed in the square until the basilica was opened for visitors at 1:30 p.m.
“I wanted to go through the Holy Doors one last time,” she said.
