Eld and who was beatified on October 10th, 2020.

For 19 years, I have shared publicly countless aspects of my son’s spiritual life.

His love for the Eucharist, his Maran devotion, his profound theological reflections.

But there was one specific warning Carlo gave me during his final weeks in September 2006.

A warning I interpreted partially incorrectly for nearly two decades because I assumed the message was primarily for ordinary lay Catholics when in reality as I have finally understood only in these last months of 2024 and early 2025.

The warning was primarily for bishops, cardinals, and especially those in positions of ecclesiastical authority who bear responsibility for guiding God’s people during times of confusion, division, and widespread temptation toward compromise with the world.

And the reason I finally understand who the message was really for is because I am watching with growing pain as the exact crisis of pastoral leadership Carlo predicted 19 years ago unfolds before my eyes in 2025.

I am 59 years old now and my life has become something I never could have imagined when Carlo was alive.

Before his death, I was simply a mother in Milan, married to Andrea Autis, focused on raising our son in the Catholic faith that he embraced with such extraordinary intensity from age seven onward.

I worked in publishing, attended daily mass because Carlo’s Eucharistic devotion had gradually transformed my own lukewarm practice into genuine encounter and lived a relatively private life centered on family and faith.

After Carlo’s death in 2006 and especially after his beatification in 2020, everything changed.

I became a public figure in Catholic circles worldwide.

I’ve given hundreds of interviews, written books about Carlo’s spirituality, spoken at conferences from Rome to Manila to S.

Paulo.

Pilgrims come to our home in Milan wanting to pray where Carlo prayed.

Parents of teenagers ask me how to raise holy children in a secular culture.

Bishops invite me to address diosis and events about youth evangelization and eukaristic devotion.

Through all of this public ministry, I have shared extensively about Carlo’s teachings.

I’ve talked about his understanding of the eukarist as the highway to heaven.

I’ve explained his digital aposttoate documenting eukaristic miracles.

I’ve described his devotion to Mary and his daily recitation of the rosary.

I’ve shared his insights about offering suffering redemptively and his joyful embrace of ordinary holiness through video games, soccer, and friendship.

But there was one teaching, one specific warning that I shared only in fragments, in generalized terms without fully grasping who the intended audience actually was.

It was a warning Carlo gave me on the evening of September 23rd, 2006, about 3 weeks before his death, regarding a crisis that would come upon the church in the decades of the 2010s, 2020s, and especially the 2030s.

A crisis he described as the temptation of silence.

For 19 years, when I mentioned this warning in talks or interviews, I framed it as a call for lay Catholics to remain firm in Orthodox faith amid a hostile secular culture.

I encouraged parents to teach their children truth despite cultural pressure.

I urged young people to have courage to live countercultural lives of chastity and holiness.

All of that was good and true and needed, but it wasn’t the primary message.

I had been reading the warning backwards.

The crisis that I’ve carried isn’t doubt about whether Carlo’s warning was authentic.

I know it was.

The crisis is the burden of slowly, painfully realizing over the course of 2024 and into 2025 that I had misidentified the primary audience for the warning and that the moment to correct that misunderstanding and direct the message to its true recipients had arrived.

Let me be specific about what triggered this realization.

Throughout 2024, I began noticing a pattern in the Catholic Church that disturbed me deeply.

Not in Rome specifically, not in one country or region, but across multiple continents.

I observed bishops and cardinals falling into precisely the temptation Carlo had described 19 years earlier.

the temptation of pastoral silence, about difficult gospel truths.

I saw bishops in Western Europe who would speak eloquently about climate change and refugees and economic justice, all important issues, but who would remain conspicuously silent about abortion, euthanasia, gender ideology being taught to children, or the redefinition of marriage.

When pressed in interviews, they would offer vague statements about accompanying people on their journey without ever clearly articulating what the church actually teaches about sexual morality or the moral absolutes that govern human sexuality.

I observed cardinals in North America who, when faced with politicians publicly advocating for abortion rights or same-sex marriage while identifying as Catholic, would not issue clear corrections or pastoral guidance, but would instead emphasize dialogue and building bridges in ways that left ordinary Catholics confused about whether these positions were compatible with Catholic faith or not.

I read pastoral letters from bishops in South America that discussed social inequality and indigenous rights.

Again, important topics, but that carefully avoided any mention of the explosion of cohabitation without marriage, the normalization of divorce and remarage without anulment, or the increasing acceptance of homosexual relationships in Catholic communities.

Most disturbing, I watched as bishops who did speak clearly about these matters, who preached about sin, repentance, the reality of hell, the need for conversion, the objective incompatibility of certain lifestyles with Catholic teaching, were often marginalized, criticized as lacking compassion, accused of being obsessed with sexual issues, or quietly sidelined by their brother bishops, who found their clarity embarrassing.

And then in late 2024, I had a conversation with a young bishop who had been recently appointed to a dascese in a western European country.

He came to visit me in Milan because he wanted to talk about Carlo’s spirituality and how to promote eukaristic devotion among young people in his dascese.

After our formal discussion, as we sat having coffee, he opened up about something more personal.

Senora Salzano, he said, his voice heavy with weariness.

I want to preach the truth.

I want to teach clearly about marriage, about sexuality, about sin and redemption.

But the pressure not to do so is immense.

My brother bishops warned me that if I speak too directly about these issues, I’ll lose credibility with young people.

I’ll be accused of homophobia or transphobia.

I’ll make evangelization harder.

They tell me to focus on pastoral accompaniment and let doctrine remain in the background.

They say that’s what true mercy looks like.

What do you think? I asked him.

He was silent for a long moment.

I think he finally said that we are lying to ourselves.

We tell ourselves we’re being merciful by staying silent about sin, but really we’re being cowardly.

We’re afraid of being rejected by the culture, afraid of being mocked by secular media, afraid of losing whatever social respectability the church still has in Western societies.

And so we abandon souls to spiritual death in the name of accompanying them.

That conversation struck me like lightning.

This young bishop had just described almost word for word what Carlo had warned about 19 years earlier.

And in that moment, I realized Carlo’s warning wasn’t primarily for lay Catholics trying to survive in secular culture.

It was for bishops and cardinals who face the temptation to remain silent about unpopular truths out of fear of cultural rejection.

I had been proclaiming the warning to the wrong audience for 19 years.

The supernatural dimension of this story isn’t a vision or an apparition.

It’s the prophetic clarity with which my 15-year-old son, dying of leukemia in September 2006, saw exactly what crisis would unfold in the church’s leadership two decades later.

I remember that evening of September 23rd, 2006, with extraordinary precision.

Carlo was home temporarily between rounds of chemotherapy.

We knew the treatment wasn’t working well, that his prognosis was grave, but we still held hope for remission.

It was approximately 7 to1 p.

m.

on a Saturday evening.

Carlo was in his bedroom, and he had been reading some church documents on his computer when he suddenly turned to me with a serious expression.

“Mama,” he said, and his tone made me immediately put aside what I had been doing.

I need to warn you about something God has been showing me during these past weeks.

It’s about the future of the church, specifically about a crisis of leadership that is coming.

I sat down on his bed next to him.

What kind of crisis? Carlo took a breath and began speaking with unusual urgency.

During the coming decades, the 2010s, 2020s, especially the 2030s, the church will face a specific temptation that will be more dangerous than external persecution.

It will be an internal temptation and it will come specifically upon the shepherds, bishops, cardinals, those who have the authority to teach.

What temptation? I asked.

The temptation of silence.

The temptation not to proclaim difficult truths of the gospel because those truths are unpopular in secular culture.

The temptation to prioritize being accepted by the world over being faithful to Christ.

The temptation to confuse genuine pastoral compassion with doctrinal compromise that abandons the sheep in the name of accompanying them.

I felt a chill run through me.

This wasn’t typical theological conversation.

Carlo was speaking with the authority of someone reporting what he had been shown, not speculating about possibilities.

He continued, “God showed me that there will be enormous cultural pressure on the church to update its teachings on sexual morality, marriage, family.

The culture will say that the church’s teachings on homosexuality are homophobic, that teachings on gender identity are transphobic, that teachings on contraception are oppressive to women, that teachings on divorce and remarage are lacking in mercy.

And the temptation for many shepherds will be to remain silent about these teachings.

Not to deny them explicitly, that would be too obvious.

But simply not to speak about them, not to preach about them, not to teach them clearly, to focus only on positive aspects of the gospel like love, mercy, inclusion, while carefully avoiding mentioning sin, repentance, hell, the need for conversion, the reality that some behaviors lead to eternal death.

Carlo paused, his eyes intense.

But mama, here’s what God showed me.

That silence is not mercy.

It’s cowardice.

And it has devastating consequences.

When shepherds remain silent about difficult truths, the sheep become confused.

They think, “If this were really important, my bishop would mention it, right?” And gradually they stop believing those teachings really matter.

And then they stop living according to them.

And then they lose their souls.

In the immediate months and years after Carlo’s death, I didn’t see the crisis he had described.

The church seemed to be navigating the challenges of secularization with reasonable faithfulness.

Pope Benedict to the 16th was writing eloquently about the dictatorship of relativism.

Bishops were generally clear in their teaching, even if secular culture rejected it.

But the first subtle signs began appearing around 2010 to 2012.

I noticed it initially in small things.

Bishops who would issue strong pastoral letters about economic justice or environmental stewardship, but whose letters on sexual morality were noticeably more tentative, more hedged with qualifications, more focused on dialogue than on clear teaching.

I attended a conference in Germany in 2013 where several bishops were discussing evangelization strategies for reaching young people.

One bishop gave a presentation arguing that the church needed to meet young people where they are by not emphasizing teachings on sexuality that they found alienating.

When I raised my hand and asked, “But don’t young people also need to hear the truth, even if it’s countercultural,” the bishop responded, “Of course, but we need to lead with mercy, not moral demands.

” At the time, I thought this was just a question of pastoral strategy, different approaches to the same goal.

I didn’t yet see it as the beginning of the silence Carlo had warned about.

The signs became more obvious after 2015.

The sinnard on the family that year revealed deep divisions among bishops about how to approach Catholics living in irregular situations, divorced and remarried, cohabiting, in same-sex relationships.

Some bishops argued for maintaining clear teaching while offering pastoral accompaniment, but others argued for changing pastoral practice in ways that to my ears sounded like effectively setting aside the teaching without formally changing it.

I began receiving letters from confused Catholics around the world.

My bishop says one thing, but the bishop in the neighboring dascese says something completely different.

Who is right? What does the church actually teach? I tried to respond with patience, explaining Orthodox teaching, but I felt a growing unease.

This confusion was exactly what Carlo had predicted.

Then in 2019, I was invited to speak at a dascese in a western European country.

After my talk about Carlo’s eukaristic devotion, a group of young adults approached me.

They were discouraged, frustrated.

We want to live according to the church’s teaching, one young woman said.

But our bishop never preaches about it.

He talks about welcoming everyone, about not judging, about pastoral mercy.

But he never explains what we should actually believe about marriage, about sexuality, about whether living with your boyfriend before marriage is sinful.

We’ve tried to ask him directly, and he just says, “Follow your conscience.

” What does that even mean? I felt anger rising in my chest.

These young people wanted truth, wanted guidance, and their shepherd was giving them vague platitudes out of what? Fear of being unpopular, fear of seeming judgmental.

I thought about Carlo’s warning.

When shepherds remain silent, the sheep become confused.

After my time at that dascese, I began paying more systematic attention to how bishops were communicating or not communicating on difficult moral issues.

I collected homalies, pastoral letters, interviews.

A pattern emerged.

Eloquence about social justice, environmental care, welcoming refugees, virtual silence about abortion, euthanasia, gender ideology, sexual morality, the reality of hell, the need for repentance from sin.

The supernatural escalation in this story is not a dramatic miracle, but the progressive revelation of prophetic accuracy.

With each passing year from 2020 onward, Carlo’s warning from 2006 proved more precisely correct.

The COVID 19 pandemic in 2020 2021 revealed something disturbing.

I watched as bishops in multiple countries enforced lockdown restrictions on churches with remarkable compliance.

In many cases, more restrictive than government mandates required.

Masses were cancelled for months.

sacraments became inaccessible.

But these same bishops who were so cautious about public health often remained silent when governments in their countries promoted abortion as essential health care that could not be restricted during lockdowns or when euthanasia laws were expanded under cover of the pandemic.

I’m not questioning the credential judgments about public health.

What struck me was the pattern.

quick compliance with secular authority on one matter, silence on moral issues where secular authority opposed church teaching.

Carlo’s beatification in October 2020 gave me a larger platform and I began using it to speak more directly about the crisis of clarity in the church’s teaching.

I would mention in interviews that Carlo had warned about shepherds who would be tempted to silence, but I still framed it primarily as a challenge for lay Catholics to remain faithful despite unclear leadership.

Then in 2023 and 2024, the crisis escalated dramatically.

Multiple Episcopal conferences issued documents about pastoral accompanyment for various situations that to my reading and to the reading of many faithful theologians seem to create space for people to continue in objective states of sin while receiving sacraments all under the language of mercy and discernment.

Bishops who raised concerns about this approach were publicly rebuked or marginalized.

Cardinals who defended traditional teaching were accused of lacking compassion.

The message became clear.

Clarity about sin was increasingly being portrayed as incompatible with mercy.

I attended a conference in Rome in early 2024 where a cardinal gave a presentation arguing that the church needed to evolve in its understanding of human sexuality to account for new anthropological insights from psychology and sociology.

When I asked during the Q&A whether this meant the church’s teaching had been wrong for 2,000 years, he responded with obvious irritation.

It means we understand mercy better now than our ancestors did.

That response shook me.

Not because I had never heard that argument before, I had, but because it came from a cardinal, a prince of the church, someone responsible for guarding the deposit of faith.

And he was saying it not with anguish or struggle, but with confidence, even pride, as if he were enlightening those of us who clung to outdated understandings.

I went back to my hotel room that evening and reread the notes I had made after my conversation with Carlo on September 23rd, 2006, and I saw with sudden clarity what I had been missing for 19 years.

Carlo hadn’t said, “Warn the lay faithful about bishops who might be silent.

” He had said, “This warning is for bishops and cardinals.

You won’t fully understand that until you see the crisis developing.

And when you see it, you need to direct the message explicitly to them.

I fell to my knees and wept.

I had been given a prophetic warning 19 years ago, and I had been proclaiming it to the wrong audience.

The message wasn’t primarily for lay Catholics trying to stay faithful.

It was for bishops and cardinals who were falling into the very temptation Carlo had described.

After that realization in early 2024, I entered a period of intense prayer and discernment.

The question before me was clear but terrifying.

How does a lay woman, a mother, publicly address bishops and cardinals to warn them that they are failing in their pastoral duty? I consulted with several priests and theologians I trusted.

Some encouraged me, citing the example of St.

Catherine of Sienna confronting popes or St.

Bridget of Sweden calling out corrupt clergy.

When shepherds fail, one priest told me, “The Holy Spirit often raises voices from unexpected places to call them back to fidelity, but others warned me to be cautious.

You risk being dismissed as presumptuous,” one theologian said.

“Or worse, you could give ammunition to schismatic groups who want to delegitimize the bishops.

be very careful about how you proceed.

I understood their concerns.

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