Fraternity Fra Elia from Apostles of God
A man who dedicates his life to God and to helping others
Welcome
Many friends scattered around the world from Europe to Australia, after a year of e-mails intertwined with ideas and actionable proposals, felt it was right to make Fra Elia known to the world.
Premise
The idea to create this project was born out of the desire to make Fra Elia, this simple great man, known to the whole world especially through his words, his actions, the extraordinary events that through him the Lord wanted to happen, and through the testimonies of hundreds of people who have improved their lives in God’s grace.
Although Fra Elia has already been invited to all continents, three times in Australia, as many times in Indonesia, all over Europe, Africa, and that thousands of people have listened to him drawing consolation from him, we think it is a beautiful and just thing to be able to make this man of God known, even to those who do not know God, those who have denied him, those who claim that God does not exist and that one can very well live without him . To those who believe they are God, sure that Fra Elia could touch their hearts.
It has been said about Him
“… What attracts him is not the things he says but how he says them. On the platform is a young man of great simplicity and purity of heart. He is simple in the best sense of the word. His voice manifests such goodness and warmth. From him comes a deep love for all of us.
” …As He says these things, his voice, his words, have a different tone … like an echo from other worlds that is authenticity, credibility, truth.
Fra Elia’s presence fills the churches, the encounter with him interrupts the hectic life we all lead, and there are so many testimonies that tell of jobs found, families reunited, illnesses stopped, hearts opened to love. But the greatest graces obtained through Fra Elia are the many conversions.
After listening to Fra Elia, it often happens suddenly that a person, after years of distance from the Lord, after years of behavior contrary to His teachings, even going so far as to insults, suddenly feels the presence of Jesus in his heart.
So, who is Elia of the Apostles of God?
Elia Cataldo, born in Francavilla Fontana, Apulia, Italy, on Feb. 20, 1962, had from birth strange dark spots on his wrists and instep that no doctor understood what they were. Around the age of 38, while he was a novice in the Capuchin convent in Lovere (Lombardy), his spots turned into stigmata on his hands, feet, side and even around his forehead like wounds from a circle of thorns . And since then in the three days before Holy Easter he suffers the Passion of the Lord. Every year during Lent the devil systematically attacks Fra Elia with constant harassment and beatings. Sometimes we find him underground, sometimes wounded unconscious in the meadow.
Since Holy Thursday Fra Elia has been lying in his bed, his head resting on the pillow soaked in blood, like his shirt and the bandages that wrap around his wrists. The rosary is always in his hands. He seems to be asleep. His face is a mask of blood and his blood-encrusted eyes make him blind… The days pass between ecstasies, moments of lucidity and prayers in Aramaic.
Fra Elia has been examined by various scientists and the Church, including Dr. Marco Margnelli, former neurophysiological researcher at the National Research Council (CNR) for 15 years whose report became the preface of the third book on Fra Elia.
Father René Laurentin , a member of the Pontifical Theological Academy in Rome (he formerly belonged to two other Mariological Academies in the same city) described as the world’s greatest Mariologist , who recently passed away at the age of 100, after meeting him and inviting him to his Parisian residence, writes about Fra Elia:
“Fra Elia received other gifts of supernatural origin, such as apparitions of various heavenly personages, Jesus himself and his mother Mary, the reading of hearts and consciences, bilocation, and the power to intercede on behalf of physical healing. His life is transfigured by his identification with Christ in the sufferings of the Passion, but also by the joy and security of rebirth.
WHAT MATTERS IN HIS LIFE IS THE FIGURE OF CHRIST WITH WHOM HE IS UNITED.
Fra Elia is the founding friar of the new religious fraternity of the Apostles of God and has lived with his brothers and sisters in the ancient Franciscan monastery of Calvi in Umbria since 2003. Fr. Marco Belladelli is the Curia Delegate to accompany Fra Elia and his fraternity in their works and mission.
The Fraternity of the Apostles of God lives in chastity, praying and working on the renovation of the old convent, found without foundations, choked with shrubs and debris accumulated over the centuries, a work that continues with only the help of Divine Providence.
Pilgrim in the world and for the world
Fra Elia’s life is summed up in the motto: “Pilgrim in the world and for the world”. Also in the consecrated formula of the APOSTLES OF GOD, Fra Elia made his own the mission of the Church which is to witness the resurrection of the Lord “to the ends of the earth” and to preach the Gospel to all men.
Some questions to Fra Elia
Fra Elia what is holiness? It is denying yourself in order to give yourself to others.
How can you forgive? First forget, then turn over a new leaf…look forward without ever looking back and start over.
How can you live peacefully in God’s grace? With few and with simplicity you get where God wants you to be, while with too much and with hurry you get where man wants you to be.
Do you have to be poor to be saved? No, you have to have God in your heart.
Summary of His Catechesis
In 2007, Father Tiziano Bogoni, an interpreter for Australia, wanted to summarize Fra Elia’s catechesis in 14 points, after accompanying him to 15 parishes from Perth to Melbourne and meeting 10,000 people.
- Always remember that we are God’s children on the way to conversion. GOD WANTS US FREE AND FULL OF LOVE! Open your heart to Him – You cannot live without God!
- Prayer – Prayer is a dialogue with God, it is the pure desire to communicate with Him, it is the need to talk to Jesus. An intimate call between us and Him. It takes a pure and sincere heart. Prayer is not routine, not just words, but a Grace of God in the heart. Prayer must come out spontaneously because we must trust Jesus. So pray from the heart, first for the sick, the forgotten, the union of families, the youth, vocations and finally for ourselves… so the graces will come.
- Do not ask too much of the Lord… ask for the right and ask for time for love in families.
- Sanctify God’s calendar : six days for us and one dedicated to him. How good it is to celebrate all together in His house … in the Father’s house … which is also our home!
- Abandon your pride , do not cultivate discord, jealousy, envy, resentment.
- Always forgive, practice mercy and charity – Do good without expecting gratitude. The Lord is merciful and we must be merciful too.
- Confession is important – entrust your burden to the Lord…you all need tranquility and peace…even in pain and bitterness.
- Involve the priest in your life . If you have problems, invite him to your home for lunch. No one can help you better than him.
- Marriage is the responsible and joyful renunciation of our selfishness…. not giving up our lives but CULTIVATING dialogue, SHARING big and small things, growing with the person we have chosen for Love… 2 people become 1
- Union of families : invite the Lord to be part of your family so that He can help you in dialogue… and to forgive each other before the sun goes down.
- Parents’ duties : be good educators, inculcate in their children, from childhood , love for the Lord… take them to church.
- I do not perform miracles . it is the Lord who does them .
- The Lord loves us , NEVER ABANDONES US AND NEVER SENDS US ILLNESSES , He does not judge us and always forgives us. It is we who judge and deny him every day.
- The Gospel is our daily bread, it is God’s word and we must learn to love it!
Four books were written about Him by Fiorella Turolli, his esteemed friend and biographer, which inexplicablely were translated into all languages, and they’re flown around the world….They had attracted the attention of some Bishops who invited him to their dioceses to bring the word of God.
Invested in the power of the Holy Spirit and in the name of the Lord Jesus, through the gifts received, with humility and simplicity Fra Elia draws to himself without distinction all the men and women of our time, all over the world, to evangelize them, announcing to them the joy of the Gospel, giving them the peace of the risen Lord Jesus and inviting them to live as truechildren of God.
Dialogue with Jesus
“I spent a long time with Jesus, side by side, sitting on a large stone. We were watching a beautiful sunset with its bright and still dazzling colors. We talked about many things, but first He scolded me: ‘If you get angry, stop yelling, that I hear you all too well…don’t be afraid. When I drag my little donkey with the rope, he sometimes rebels but I am always the one guiding him…and then the little donkey brays and goes braying where he wants but I am always the one watching and protecting him.”
Why did you choose me, a poor little donkey who didn’t even want to obey you?
I sent you into the world because you said yes. I sent you because your yes meant accepting all the marks of my Passion, and seeing you branded in blood, the world would understand how much I suffered for all of you….and so many would believe. Your sufferings (which you accepted) also liberated many souls.
After a few moments of silence Brother Elijah asks, “IL Covid, this ugly disease they say you sent it…”
Jesus answers, I don’t send sickness and chastisement…and Brother Elijah: “however you allowed it”…No,I didn’t allow anything, it was you men who wanted it…
And Brother Elijah asks, “How?”…Jesus answers: it was a small thing, an experiment by the military that got out of hand….
I am the one who created the world and if I wanted to I could crush it with one hand, but I love you too much to do that….
Jesus, please keep me here with you, let me do whatever you want, send me wherever you want.
Jesus became angry: don’t allow yourself to say these things anymore, I don’t do things by halves…you must complete what I started…but then gently he continued: remember I am and will always be with you. And then Jesus with a hand gesture showed Brother Elijah many people on the left, whom he then moved to the right, others were already on the left and Jesus ruled them all as he wanted.
Brother Elijah realized the power of Jesus but did not understand what He was doing.
Monsignor attentive to Brother Elijah’s account, he explained: the Lord wanted to show you that it is always He who directs the path of the living and those who have passed away…Just as the good shepherd does not want to lose any sheep, God does not forget anyone and loves all His children more than Himself to the point of giving His life for them.
“Yes,” answered Brother Elijah… ”now I remember…many of those people were souls…and I asked Him where He should take them…Jesus answered that He had already taken them all in and they would be with Him forever…He was wearing a beautiful brown striped suit and smiling…so that I still asked Him about many important things, especially when He would return here to earth, but Jesus exclaimed, That’s enough now, you will have those answers at the proper time…you meanwhile continue to obey and pray. I will return when the Father wills it…but I will show up.”
Fiorella Turolli
Frà Sergio’s Testimoniance
Brother Sergio, the first brother who followed Fra Elia in Calvi, writes: “To speak of a man of God is like speaking of the ineffability of God, that is, of the impossibility of giving a collocation, a classification and a qualification to the story and the person who lives this particular and unique relationship of Trinitarian belonging”.
Thus Fiorella, when she began to write the fourth book on Fra Elia, was struck by the categorical question, “How can I tell the story of a man lived by God?” The answer was not long in coming. The Lord at the right time knows how to help and suggest what to do. The model that inspired Fiorella is that of the storytellers, the telling of lived stories, of events that happened, of sensations, of feelings, of everything extraordinary that happened and personally experienced alongside him.
This method was suggested to Fiorella to tell about Fra Elia, to convey an existential content that goes beyond mere humanity and is imbued with a fragrance of infinity that often surpasses our understanding because it allows a glimpse of the ineffability of God present in this man.
Convent Fra Elia
Calvi dell’Umbria numbered just 600 souls in the 13th century. A tiny town in Sabina (which would enter politically into the Umbrian orbit only in 1827) capable, however, of being the birthplace of two great figures in Franciscan history: one of the first saints and one of the first bishops.
Berardo from Calvi , counted among the Franciscan protomartyrs, killed in Morocco in 1220 along with four other friars from the current diocese of Terni Narni Amelia (Ottone Petricchi from Stroncone, Adiuto from Schifanoia, Accursio from Aguzzo and Pietro from San Gemini) he would become one of the first saints of the order founded by Francis of Assisi .
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