# Blessed paper

**Carta benedetta**

**Known today as.** Paper blessed so that what is written on it may take effect.

Kind: Sacramental

## What did Canale use it for?

For writing holy names to place on the patient, to test for and repel spirits (Treatise Two).

## What does modern science say?

A rite of the older books of blessing.

## What did the older authorities say?

**The Catholic Encyclopedia.** The Catholic Encyclopedia divides blessings into two classes, “invocative and constitutive. The former are those in which the Divine benignity is invoked on persons or things, to bring down upon them some temporal or spiritual good without changing their former condition. Of this kind are the blessings given to children, and to articles of food,” while the constitutive “permanently depute persons or things to Divine service by imparting to them some sacred character.” The efficacy of any approved blessing “is derived from the prayers and invocations of the Church made in her name by her ministers,” and that of a private person's “will be commensurate with his acceptableness before God.”

## Sources

- *The Catholic Encyclopedia* (New York, 1907–1914), “Blessing.” newadvent.org/cathen/02599b.htm

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*Blessed paper.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-01. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/blessed-paper

Historical description, not medical advice.