The Eucharistic Miracles of the World Exhibition Touches Down in Pretoria

by Daluxolo Moloantoa · Published June 3, 2024 · Updated June 3, 2024

“This is my miracle. It is a true miracle indeed, and I thank God for bringing me to the exhibition today,” Memory Mawire said, wiping away tears from her face at the St Martin de Porres Church in Sunnyside, Pretoria. Mawire was one of the attendants of the Eucharistic Miracles of the World exhibition, staged at the church on June 1.

She made a startling discovery as she walked through the exhibition, reading about the various miracles on display. She discovered that her family history was very closely linked to one of the saints on display. Her mother, who passed on in August 2014, was named Catherine Siena Danda. She never knew why her mother was given these two names.

“Upon coming across this display of St Catherine of Siena, whose existence I never knew of, it has dawned on me that my mother’s two names are undoubtedly linked to her. She was clearly named after her. I never knew about this. My mother, God bless her soul, did not tell us children in the family about this. It was probably because she did not get the chance to do it. I adored and I still adore her, even in her absence. This indeed is my revelation. I cannot believe what has just happened,” she told The Southern Cross.

The Eucharistic Miracles of the World exhibition is an exhibition that was curated in 2005 by Blessed Carlo Acutis. He was a fifteen-year-old Italian who aimed to use new media to evangelise and proclaim the Gospel. He had made the Eucharist a core theme of his life. “Jesus is my friend and the Eucharist is the highway to heaven,” he once said. He was also noted for his cheerfulness, his computer skills, and indeed his deep devotion to the Eucharist. Also known as the “God’s Influencer”, he is set to become the first saint of the millennial generation.

He was beatified on October 10, 2020, two days before the 14th anniversary of his death. He had started compiling the catalogue of miracles onto a website at the age of eleven. The exhibition is a display of over a hundred photographic panels of Church-approved Eucharistic miracles collected from an online catalogue that he designed and created before his death at the age of fifteen in 2006. The travelling exhibition was brought to South Africa by Mammuso Makoa and Mapaseka Letho. It was staged for the first time in SA on July 31 2021 via a WhatsApp virtual event, due to lockdown restrictions of the Covid-19 pandemic at the time.

Speaking to The Southern Cross, Fr Sefiri Motsepe, parish priest of St Martin de Porres Church said that the importance of bringing the exhibition to his parish was to educate the parishioners about the importance of the Eucharist. “We would like to reinvigorate the sense of devoutness, the sense of piety and prayerfulness into our parish. From the response thus far, it is very apparent that the attendants are learning and are becoming exposed to information and facts that they never knew about Christ and the Eucharistic miracles,” he said.

Organiser Ms Mammuso Makoa said that the exhibition was meant to act as a platform for the education of Catholics about the extensive variety of Eucharistic miracles beyond what they knew already. “Many of the faithful were not aware that there are so many of the Church-approved Eucharistic miracles of the world. Many were only aware of the famous ones like St Francis of Assisi, St Claire, and St Anthony of Padua, amongst others. It is an eye-opener for many Catholics, especially on the significance of the Eucharistic in the Church,” Ms Makoa said.

The exhibition has made many stops across parishes in South Africa and it has also visited Swaziland and Lesotho.

To find out more on the exhibition, please contact the exhibitors here: Mammuso Elizabeth Makoa on 083695476. Email address