Niccolò Reale

This is the story of Niccolò Reale, future engineer, a young man of 26 years of age whom we met in the cenacle of deepening faith created in Torrita di Siena by his priest friend Don Andrea Malacarne. In the beautifully restored room of the former convent, a large group of Chianini people met to deepen their knowledge of Niccolò, a boy who is already very famous on the internet. We read about him on the Summa Cognito Instagram profile which has many followers, including many priests and bishops, all passionate about his story: a splendid experience that smacks of the incredible, certainly not the result of magic, of a spontaneous miracle but of a beautiful journey made in the light of the intelligence of faith, deepened, lived, suffered.
Niccolò was born into a family of a Catholic father and a Protestant mother; he was baptized in the Catholic church as a child but when his parents separated he was entrusted to the loving care of his mother who expertly introduced him to the Protestant religion. As in every man, the maternal figure is fundamental and here too: the mother fed him with bread and the Word of God with great love, she taught him the Bible, explained the scriptures to him and in this the Protestant brothers are incomparable based one's path to salvation in union with Christ is based solely and exclusively on the Bible.
Well like all young people, Niccolò tells us about an adolescent crisis that led him towards atheism and also to a violent rebellion, also tinged with blasphemies, as he humbly confesses. Thanks to the closeness of his friends from the Protestant church and certainly also to the prayers of his mother, for him a revived Saint Monica, Niccolò received from a group of friends what is always hoped for in these cases, that is, an encounter made up of loving, patient, judgment in which for the first time he did not feel correct but opened his heart: the protagonist is his friend Cristian who will forever be his companion in his life of faith and carefree youth.
Niccolò, strengthened by this conversation, resumes his life but with a deep longing that makes him cry "God, if you are there, guide me, I want to know you". Then he stumbles upon, curious as he is, a second-hand shop: on the dusty shelf he sees the book The Confessions of Saint Augustine for one euro. His thirst for culture pushes him to purchase and start reading; the desire for knowledge increased and from the Confessions he moves on to the commentary on the Gospel of Saint John, again by the saint of Hippo in which he preaches to people in crisis with the Faith. During this period of study, his growing curiosity makes him discover a new world of rereading those ancient homilies and he also relies on the fathers of the Church such as Ignatius of Antioch, Irene of Lyons, Justin Martyr. From these authors, the young man draws the matrix of faith, enters the heart of the Catholic world and the Catholic world also enters his heart; Niccolò embraces Christ again, but not the Christ of the brothers of the Protestant church but the Christ of the great Catholic Church. A church that seduced him from many points of view tells us: in Catholicism he found unity between the various parishes, the love for silent prayer, the taste for adoration in which the Body of Christ, Real as the surname of the young Pratese, speaks to the heart, working it slowly. In the Eucharist we are in the presence of the love of God which in silence, without LED lights or impressive music, is always available to every hungry person in need of regenerating their strength.


The push towards the Catholic Church is becoming more and more dizzying; by chance he meets a priest Don Sergio on the train, but we know that in Fede's life, chance does not exist and he slowly manages to delve deeper into the fundamental concepts of faith with him; With the support of the bishop of Prato, Giovanni Nerbini, very fascinated by this twenty-five year old's knowledge of pateristics, Niccolò is encouraged to follow this catechetical path.
On February 22nd, Cattedra Di San Pietro Niccolò receives the sacraments in the church of Sant'Agostino, coincidentally, in the historic center of Prato. Godfather is Don Domenico Ariano from Altamura, a priest who follows him online in the Summa Cognito profile like many priests and bishops today.
Here is the beautiful conversion story of this young man who shouts to modern children who need a spiritual life and who must be recovered in their life expectancy, annihilated instead by the hypnotic flattening of the social world. Recently Don GinoVerdi, of the Romena Fraternity, said that in welcoming desperate parents with dead children, 60% of these deaths occurred by suicide. Today, kids violently feel the bite of desperation, they suffer panic attacks never seen in the past, they lose the desire to live trapped in the grips  which extinguishes any interest and faith in the future; not to mention the attacks of violence fueled by selfishness and fear of self-centered and spoiled education. It is to these desperate young people, in search of a reason, in search of the flavor and taste of life that Niccolò Reale wants to speak in the Social Summa Cognito profile that we invite everyone to follow. Wasn't it a certain boy named Carlo Acutis who opened his pure heart to the computer world, seeking and depositing sparks of sanctity online? There is network and network, therefore: never demonize absolutely.
Niccolò's story also offers suggestions on how to approach a young man who is in an existential crisis, in a crisis of faith and as Niccolò says "when a soul shines then in the end it illuminates all the people around": this is what he accomplished the love of God in the life of Nicolò Reale.