01
A priest and a chalice
The Archdiocese of Zagreb recounts a Mass in Ludbreg in 1411. In the local account, a priest doubted the Real Presence and then saw what seemed to be fresh blood in the chalice. He put the chalice aside and finished Mass. This is a historical devotional tradition, told in a later archdiocesan account; the priest’s observation is not a laboratory finding or a contemporaneous record reproduced here.
02
A reported inquiry in Rome
The archdiocesan account says Pope Julius II sent representatives to investigate, hear witnesses and examine reports of healings associated with the relic. It names the papal representative and local participants. The archdiocese reports that Julius died before finishing the matter, and that his successor Leo X permitted public veneration of the relic in 1513. Its account dates the bull to March 12; a regional tourism source gives April 14. Because those dates conflict, this page uses the year without claiming a settled day.
03
A devotion that continues
The sanctuary in Ludbreg remains a place of pilgrimage. In 2011, the Holy See named a papal envoy to the close of the 600th-anniversary celebrations. That recognition of a pilgrimage and its history is not a modern scientific finding about the substance in the chalice. The Church’s permission for public veneration belongs to the story; it should not be recast as a new Vatican certification of every detail of the event.
Sources and image credit
Archdiocese of Zagreb, account of the Ludbreg devotion
Holy See Press Office, papal envoy for the 600th anniversary
Editorially checked September 29, 2026. Independent devotional collection. Not affiliated with the Carlo Acutis Association.