You want to hear something that still makes my hands shake when I say it out loud?

I’m Padre Marcelo Costa, 54 years old, priest for 28 years, served in favelas, [snorts] in parishes in the interior of Brazil, in a cathedral once for a brief, miserable year of bureaucracy.

And I’m about to tell you something that I’ve kept locked inside for almost 18 years.

18 years of silence. Not because I forgot it, because I remembered it every single day.

And every single day I told myself, “Marcelo, you cannot say this. They will think you’re crazy.

They will think you fabricated a story for attention. They will investigate you. You could lose everything.”

But now it’s 2024. And everything that was told to me back in October of 2006 has happened.

Exactly. Precisely. In ways that I cannot explain as coincidence, as hallucination, as psychological breakdown.

So, I’m talking. Finally. Even if it costs me my reputation, even if the bishop calls me in for a conversation I don’t want to have, I can’t be silent anymore.

Let me go back, way back, to the worst year of my life, 2006. I had been a priest for 10 years at that point, ordained in 1996, and I was dying inside.

Not physically, spiritually, vocationally. You have to understand, when you’re in seminary, you have this beautiful, idealistic vision.

You think you’re going to be a shepherd. You think you’re going to hold the Eucharist up and watch people cry because they’re so moved by God’s presence.

You think you’re going to hear confessions and see lives transform. And then you get out into the real church, and you realize that maybe 60% of your job is administration, budgets, parish council meetings, complaints about the music, complaints about the homily length, complaints about the color of the new carpet in the parish hall.

And underneath all of that, the scandals. 2006 was when everything was starting to explode.

The abuse crisis, the cover-ups, the bishops who knew and did nothing. The priests I had admired who turned out to be predators or enablers.

I read the news every morning and felt a sick feeling in my gut. This was the bride of Christ.

This was the institution I had given my life to? I started to doubt. Not God.

I never doubted God. I doubted the church. I doubted whether the hierarchy actually believed anything anymore.

I doubted whether the sacraments even mattered to the men running the show. I watched mediocre priests get promoted because they were good at politics, while holy priests got shoved into tiny parishes in the middle of nowhere.

I watched theologians say things that sounded nice, but emptied the faith of any real content.

No sin, no judgment, no hell, just a vague, fuzzy love that never asked anything of anyone.

And I thought, “What am I doing here? I could leave. I could ask for laicization.

I could get married, have a normal job, go to mass as a layperson on Sundays, and not have to carry this weight.”

The thought became a constant hum in the back of my mind. Every morning when I put on my collar, I asked myself, “Is this worth it?

Does God even care about the church anymore? Or did he just abandon the whole thing to corrupt, mediocre men?”

That was my state in October of 2006. Desperate. Broken. On the edge of walking away.

I had been reading the diary of Saint Faustina, Divine Mercy. That was one of the few things that still gave me a little light.

The idea that God’s mercy was real, that it was available even to the worst sinners, that it wasn’t just a doctrine, but a living reality.

I felt drawn to Krakow, to the Sanctuary of Divine Mercy, to the tomb of Saint Faustina herself.

I don’t know why. I’m Brazilian. Krakow is far. I didn’t have much money, but I scraped together what I could, got a cheap flight, and went.

I told my bishop I was taking a personal retreat. He didn’t ask questions. Nobody cared.

That’s how it was. Nobody cared if a priest was falling apart. I arrived on October 9th, 2006.

I went straight to the Sanctuary. I knelt at the tomb of Saint Faustina, and I prayed.

Not the beautiful, pious prayers you learn in the seminary. I prayed like a man drowning.

“Faustina, please, if Divine Mercy is real, if God actually cares about his church, I need a sign.

I need to know if I should stay or if I should go, because I can’t keep pretending everything is fine when I see the rot growing inside the institution that is supposed to be holy.

Help me. Please. I’m begging you.” I stayed there for hours. Nothing happened. No voice, no vision.

Just silence. I went back to my cheap hotel room, frustrated, feeling even more alone.

The next day, October 10th, Tuesday, I went back to the tomb. I knelt again.

This time, something was different. I can’t explain it. The air felt thicker. Not scary.

Just heavy with presence. I was alone in that part of the Sanctuary. It was around 3:00 in the afternoon.

I was praying the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, the one Faustina taught, the one that asks for mercy for the whole world.

And I was crying. Not quiet tears. I was sobbing. I hadn’t cried like that since I was a child.

I was so tired. So tired of pretending. So tired of carrying the weight alone.

And then I felt someone behind me. I turned around. And there was a woman.

Elderly, maybe 70 years old. She was wearing a simple, religious habit, not one I recognized.

Gray. Plain. Her face was kind, gentle, with wrinkles that looked like they came from smiling a lot.

But her eyes, her eyes were not old. They were sharp, penetrating. Like she could see right through my skull into my thoughts.

She was standing about 2 m away, hands folded in front of her, looking at me with an expression that was both tender and terribly serious.

She spoke in Italian. I recognized Italian because I’d learned a little in seminary, but I was shocked.

Krakow, Poland. Everyone speaks Polish. Why was this old nun speaking to me in Italian?

And how did she know I was a priest? I wasn’t wearing my collar openly.

I had a jacket on. She said, “Padre, I have come to bring you a message.

A message that was given to me for you by a young man who is dying right now in Italy.

His name is Carlo. He knows Saint Faustina very intimately. And she sent him to send me to tell you something you need to hear.”

I froze. My mind was spinning. A young man dying in Italy? Carlo? What was she talking about?

I had never heard of any Carlo. And what did she mean, “He knows Saint Faustina intimately?”

Intimately? Like a friend? Like a mystic? I opened my mouth to ask a question, but she held up her hand.

Just a small gesture. But I shut my mouth. There was something about her. Something that made questioning feel impossible.

She continued. Her voice firm, but gentle. Like a grandmother who loves you, but isn’t going to let you interrupt.

“Santa Faustina wants you to know three things. Three things she revealed to this young man, Carlo, in the last weeks of his life.

Three truths about the future of the church. They will test your faith over the next 20 years, but you need to know them now, so that you do not despair when you see them happening.”

I didn’t say anything. I just listened. And for about 8 minutes, maybe longer, time stopped.

I can’t explain it. The sounds of the Sanctuary faded. The footsteps of other pilgrims disappeared.

There was just her voice. And the words she spoke burned themselves into my memory like hot iron.

She said, “The first message. In the next 20 years, it will seem that Divine Mercy has been perverted from within the church itself.

Bishops and theologians will use the language of mercy to justify abolishing the concepts of sin, hell, conversion, and repentance.

They will turn mercy into cheap permissiveness. They will say, “God loves you just as you are, so you don’t need to change anything.”

But the true message of divine mercy that St. Faustina received always included the urgent call to repentance and conversion.

Not as an option, as a condition for receiving mercy. This perversion of the message will not come from atheists outside the church.

It will come from clerics inside the church, and they will quote St. Faustina’s own diary while completely distorting its meaning.

My heart started pounding because even in 2006, I had already seen the beginnings of this.

Theologians who said hell was empty. Who said sin was just a failure to love yourself.

Who said confession was optional because God just forgives everyone anyway. But she was saying it would get worse.

Much worse. She didn’t wait for me to respond. She continued. The second message, “There will be a specific moment, approximately 15 years after Carlo’s death, when authorities within the church will try to suppress or modify aspects of the devotion to divine mercy that emphasize judgment, hell, and the need for sacramental confession.

They will do this under the pretext of making it more accessible and less frightening for modern people.

But in reality, it will be because these truths disturb their project of deconstructing traditional moral doctrine.

And you, Padre Marcelo, will witness this attempt. And you will have to choose. Stay silent to protect your position or defend the integrity of the original message even at the risk of censorship.”

I felt sick. 15 years after Carlo’s death. That would be around 2021. I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I believed her.

I don’t know why. I just did. She took a small breath, and then she said the third message, the one that haunts me to this day.

“Santa Faustina wants you to know that the crisis you see now in the church in 2006 is only the beginning.

In the next 20 years, it will get worse in ways you cannot imagine. There will be doctrinal confusion without precedent coming from the highest levels of the hierarchy.

Many good priests will leave the ministry out of despair, while mediocre and corrupt priests will prosper politically.

But in the middle of this storm, God will raise up small witnesses, young people, lay people, people without institutional power.

They will keep the flame of truth alive. And Carlo is the first of these witnesses.

You should look to him as a model. A teenager without official position, without formal theological credentials, but with such radical holiness and such pure witness that he will do more to renew the church than a thousand episcopal documents.

And if you stay in the priesthood, and St. Faustina begs you to stay, your work will not be to climb the hierarchy or gain political influence.

Your work will be to faithfully shepherd individual souls with undiluted truth while the institution around you collapses and is rebuilt.”

I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to ask her so many questions. Who are you? How do you know my name?

Who is this Carlo? How did you find me? But when I opened my mouth, she just smiled.

A gentle, sad smile. She said, “You will understand everything in a few days, Padre, when you read the news about a teenager from Milan.”

And then she turned and walked away. I tried to follow her. I got to my feet, my knees aching from kneeling, and I pushed through the few pilgrims who were there.

But she was gone. Disappeared like smoke. I searched the entire sanctuary, the courtyard, the street outside.

Nothing. No elderly nun in a gray habit. No trace. I stood there in the cold Polish air, shaking.

I thought, “I’ve lost my mind. I’ve had a breakdown. The stress, the exhaustion, the desperation, it finally broke me.”

But the words, the words were so specific, so coherent, so prophetic. They weren’t vague platitudes.

They were detailed predictions about the future of the church, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that something real had just happened.

I went back to my hotel. I couldn’t sleep. I just lay there, staring at the ceiling, repeating the three messages in my head so I wouldn’t forget them.

Two days later, October 12th, 2006, I was back in Brazil by then. I was sitting in my small parish office trying to catch up on emails when I opened an Italian news website.

I don’t even remember why. Maybe because I was still thinking about the woman who spoke Italian.

And there it was. The headline. I stopped breathing. Carlo. The name. A teenager dying in Italy.

Exactly when the woman had said. I clicked on the article. I read it. And then I saw the photograph.

A boy, 15 years old, dark hair, kind face, a slight smile. But his eyes, even in a grainy newspaper photo, his eyes were different.

There was something there. A peace, a depth, a holiness that you could almost feel through the page.

I read everything I could find about him over the next few weeks. His extraordinary devotion to the Eucharist.

The website he built cataloging Eucharistic miracles. His love for our lady. His daily mass attendance.

The way he offered his suffering from leukemia for the Pope and for the church.

And his death. Peaceful. Accepting. He had said to his mother, “I’m going to heaven.

I’ll pray for you there.” Just like that. No fear. No anger. Just trust. I remembered the woman’s words.

“A young man who is dying right now in Italy. He knows St. Faustina very intimately.”

How could a 15-year-old boy know St. Faustina intimately? I didn’t understand. But I started to read about Carlo’s spirituality, and I discovered that he had a deep devotion to divine mercy.

He prayed the chaplet. He had read the diary. He had even made posters and materials to spread the devotion.

He was a teenager, and he understood the message of mercy better than most theologians I knew.

Real quick, if you want to explore more of Carlo after this, I made a 7-day thing.

5 minutes a day. Simple as that. Links down there. Anyway, where was I? So, October 12th, 2006, Carlo died, and I was in Krakow on October 10th, 2006, hearing a message from a mysterious woman who said it came from him.

The timing. The specificity. The fact that I had never heard of Carlo Acutis before that moment.

And then 2 days later, his death was in the news. Coincidence? Possible. But then the prophecies started to come true.

Let me walk you through 18 years. 18 years of watching, waiting, and recognizing. The first prophecy, the perversion of divine mercy.

By 2010, I was already seeing it. Theologians and bishops who used the phrase divine mercy to mean that God’s love overrides everything, including justice, including repentance, including the very concept of sin.

They started saying things like, “We don’t need to confess our sins because God’s mercy already covers everything.”

Or, “The idea of hell is incompatible with a merciful God.” Or, “Repentance is just a psychological concept, not a spiritual necessity.”

And they quoted Faustina. They quoted her diary out of context. They took beautiful passages about God’s love and used them to erase the passages about judgment, about the need for confession, about the reality of hell.

I watched it happen in real time. I attended conferences where speakers twisted Faustina’s words into a justification for moral relativism.

I read books by Catholic authors who claimed that the message of Divine Mercy meant that everyone is saved no matter what.

And every time I remembered the woman’s voice. They will quote the diary while completely distorting its meaning.

Yes, that’s exactly what happened. The second prophecy. The attempt to suppress or modify the devotion.

This one started around 2020 2021. 15 years after Carlo’s death, like she said. I saw documents from certain dioceses.

I heard about liturgical committees that wanted to change the wording of the Chaplet of Divine Mercy.

Remove references to just anger and judgement. Make it softer. More palatable. I heard about bishops who discouraged the public recitation of the Chaplet because it was too focused on sin and punishment.

I watched as some Catholic publishers released editions of Faustina’s diary with sensitive passages removed or footnoted into irrelevance.

And I had to choose. Stay silent or speak. I’m not a brave man. I was afraid.

But I spoke. Not loudly. Not heroically. I wrote a small article for a local Catholic newsletter.

I gave a retreat on the true message of Divine Mercy. The one Faustina actually wrote with all its uncomfortable edges.

I was not censored, but I was warned. Padre, be careful. You don’t want to be seen as divisive.

That’s what they told me. And I thought of the woman’s words. You will have to choose.

I chose. Imperfectly. But I chose. The third prophecy. The crisis getting worse. Oh, this one.

This one hurts. Because it’s true. The doctrinal confusion from the highest levels.

I never thought I would see it. But I have. Public statements that seem to contradict previous teachings.

Documents that are ambiguous in ways that are not accidental. A sense that the bark of Peter is not just rocking but taking on water.

Good priests leaving. Good priests broken. I know dozens. Men I went to seminary with who have asked for laicization because they can’t take it anymore.

They say, “The church doesn’t want holiness. The church wants managers.” And I can’t blame them.

I almost left myself, but I stayed. Because of that woman. Because of Carlo. Because of the message that my job was not to fix the institution, but to shepherd souls while the institution collapsed and was rebuilt.

And the small witnesses. Carlo is not the only one. But he was the first.

Since his death, I have watched his cause for canonization move forward. Beatified in 2020.

His tomb in Assisi is a pilgrimage site now. Thousands of young people go there.

They’re inspired by him. A teenager who loved video games and computers who wasn’t weird or creepy, who was just holy.

In a normal way. In a way that seems possible. He didn’t found an order.

He didn’t write a famous book. He didn’t give a single homily from a pulpit.

He just loved the Eucharist. He just went to mass every day. He just offered his suffering.

And that did more than all the committees and task forces and synodal pathways combined.

I’ve been to Assisi. I’ve knelt at his tomb. I’ve prayed, “Carlo, you don’t know me, but I received a message that came through you.

Thank you. Thank you for helping a broken Brazilian priest stay in the fight.” I don’t know if he heard me, but I believe he did.

Now, it’s 2024. Almost 18 years since that impossible day in Krakow. The prophecies have come true.

Every single one. And I’m still here. Still a priest. Still tired sometimes. Still frustrated.

Still angry at the corruption and the cowardice. But not despairing. Not anymore. Because I know something now that I didn’t know in 2006.

I know that God has not abandoned his church. He’s allowing it to be purified.

And purification is painful. It looks like destruction. It feels like collapse. But it’s not.

It’s a pruning. And when the pruning is done, new life will grow. I think about Carlo.

15 years old. Dying of leukemia. And in his last weeks, he was somehow connected to Saint Faustina.

How? I don’t know. I don’t understand the mechanics of heaven. But I believe that the saints are alive.

I believe they intercede. I believe they can communicate. And I believe that Faustina, who received the message of Divine Mercy, wanted that message to be protected from distortion.

So she reached out to a dying teenager. And that teenager, through a mysterious old nun in Krakow, reached out to me.

A nobody. A priest on the edge of quitting. And that message saved my vocation.

I’ve kept this secret for 18 years. I’ve told no one. Not my bishop. Not my closest friend in the priesthood.

Not even my spiritual director. Because I was afraid. Afraid of being laughed at. Afraid of being accused of fabricating a sensational story to get attention.

Afraid of being investigated by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith or whatever they call it now.

There’s a process for private revelations. You’re supposed to submit them to your bishop who submits them to the Vatican.

They investigate. They decide whether it’s worthy of belief. Most of the time, they say, “No.”

And if they say no, you’re supposed to forget it. And if you keep talking about it, you can be censored.

So I stayed silent. But I can’t anymore. Not because I want fame. Not because I want to be seen as a prophet.

God knows I’m not a prophet. I’m just a parish priest who was desperate and got an answer he didn’t expect.

I’m speaking now because the prophecies have been fulfilled. And because Carlo Acutis is being canonized.

Probably soon. His second miracle has been approved, I’ve heard. And when he is declared a saint, the world will know his name.

But they won’t know this part. They won’t know that in his final days, he was a messenger between a Polish mystic and a Brazilian priest.

That’s a hidden story. And I think it’s time for it to be told. I’m not asking you to believe me.

I’m not even asking the church to approve this as a private revelation. That’s not my place.

I’m just telling you what happened. Take it or leave it. But if you’re a priest or a seminarian or a Catholic who is discouraged by the state of the church, I want you to hear this.

Stay. Don’t leave. Don’t abandon your post. The crisis is real. The confusion is real.

The corruption is real. But God is raising up small witnesses. Carlo was one. You can be another.

You don’t need a position. You don’t need credentials. You just need to love Jesus in the Eucharist.

You just need to go to mass. You just need to offer your suffering for the church.

That’s it. That’s the whole secret. I almost left. I was packing my bags emotionally.

I had my resignation letter written in my head. And then a dying teenager, through a mysterious old nun, told me to stay.

And I stayed. And I’ve seen things since then that have confirmed that decision. Not miracles, necessarily.

Just small graces. A sinner who came back to confession after 20 years. A family that reconciled because I encouraged them to forgive.

A young man who entered the seminary after I told him Carlo’s story. Small things.

But they add up. They’re the real work of the priesthood. Not the politics. Not the promotions.

Not the power. Just one soul at a time. I don’t know what’s coming next for the church.

The woman said the crisis would last 20 years. That was in 2006. 20 years would be 2026.

We’re almost there. But she didn’t say it would end then. She said it would get worse before it got better.

Maybe 2026 is not the end. Maybe it’s just a milestone. I don’t know. I’m not a prophet.

I’m just a priest who was given a glimpse of the plan. And the plan is this.

God is purifying his church. It hurts. It looks like failure. But it’s not. It’s surgery.

And when the surgery is over, the church will be smaller, poorer, humbler, and holier.

That’s my hope. That’s what keeps me going. I want to tell you one more thing.

A small thing. In 2007, about a year after Carlo died, I went back to Krakow.

I wanted to see if I could find that old nun. I searched the sanctuary.

I asked the sisters who worked there. Was there a nun in a gray habit, about 70 years old, who was here in October of 2006?

They all said no. They didn’t recognize the description. They said no such nun was attached to their community.

I even checked the guest books, the visitor logs. Nothing. No record. It was as if she had never existed.

But she did. I know she did. Because I remember every word she said. I remember her eyes.

I remember the weight of her presence. And I remember the name she gave me, Carlo.

Real talk, did this story do anything for you, even just a little? Let me know down in the comments.

And look, if you’ve watched this far, you might as well subscribe, right? It literally takes 2 seconds, and it helps me create more content like this.

So, here I am, Padre Marcelo Costa, 54 years old, still a priest, still serving in a small parish in a working-class neighborhood in Brazil, still broke most of the time, still exhausted, but not broken.

Not anymore. Because a teenager named Carlo Acutis, who died 24 hours after I knelt at Faustina’s tomb, reached across the veil of death and told me to stay.

And I stayed. If you’re a priest listening to this, and you’re thinking about leaving, please don’t.

Not yet. Give it 1 more year. 1 more month. 1 more day. Go to the tabernacle.

Sit there. Tell Jesus you’re tired. Tell him you’re angry. Tell him you don’t understand what he’s doing with his church.

He can take it. He’s big enough. And then listen. Not for a voice, not for a vision.

Just listen in your heart. He might send you a message, too. Maybe not through a mysterious old nun in Krakow.

Maybe through a child in your parish. Maybe through a line in scripture. Maybe just through a quiet peace that settles over you when you stop fighting and start trusting.

That’s what Carlo would want. I think. He was a teenager who loved the Eucharist more than anything.

He would want you to love the Eucharist, too. He would want you to receive Jesus every day.

He would want you to go to confession regularly. He would want you to pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, not as a magic formula, but as an act of trust in the ocean of God’s mercy.

And he would want you to know that the truth matters. That mercy without truth is not mercy.

That repentance is not optional. That hell is real. That we need to be saved.

And that God, in his mercy, has given us everything we need to be saved.

The sacraments. The Eucharist. The church. Even a church that is bleeding and broken. Especially a church that is bleeding and broken.

I’ll end with this. A few weeks ago, I was saying Mass. A small weekday Mass.

Maybe 15 people. Old ladies, mostly. And a young man came in. Late teens. He sat in the back.

He didn’t receive communion. After Mass, he came up to me. He was crying. He said, “Padre, I’ve been away from the church for 3 years.

I got into drugs. I hurt my family. I thought God didn’t want me anymore.

But last night, I saw a video about Carlo Acutis, about how he loved the Eucharist.

And I don’t know why, but I came here today.” I heard his confession. I absolved him.

I gave him the Eucharist. And when he received, he wept. Not loud sobs, just tears streaming down his face.

And I thought, “This is it. This is why I stayed. For this kid. For this moment.

For one soul. Carlo did that. From heaven. He reached down and grabbed a lost teenager in Brazil.

And that teenager is now coming back to Mass. He’s in a recovery program. He’s reconciling with his family.

One soul. That’s the small witness. That’s how the church gets rebuilt. Not from the top down, from the bottom up.

One Eucharist at a time. One confession at a time. One small, hidden act of holiness at a time.

Thank you for listening. Thank you for letting me tell you about Carlo, about Faustina, about the woman who disappeared, about the prophecies that came true.

Pray for me. I’m just a tired old priest trying to be faithful. And pray for Carlo.

He’s a saint now, I believe. Not because the church says so, though she will soon, but because he lived a life that radiated Jesus.

And because from heaven, he’s still helping people. Including me. Especially me. Go in peace.

And remember, Divine Mercy is real. But it asks something of you. It asks you to repent.

It asks you to trust. It asks you to change. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

That’s the message. That’s the whole message. And it came through a teenager who died too young, but lived just long enough to save a priest who was ready to quit.

Deus te abençoe. God bless you. And God bless Carlo Acutis, messenger of mercy, witness of the Eucharist, my tiny, powerful saint.

I’m done. For now. If you want to know more, if you have questions, leave them below.

I’ll answer what I can. And if you made it this far, thank you. You have no idea what it means to me that you listened to the whole thing.

Now go. Live. Love the Eucharist. And don’t leave any doors open. That’s what Carlo would say.

That’s what I say, too.