Italian Teen Carlo Acutis, "God's Influencer," Will Be Canonized As First Millennial Saint
The computer programming prodigy spread the word of God and documented miracles online.
By Gary Gately
In his short life, Carlo Acutis became renowned as “the patron saint of the internet” and “God’s influencer” for spreading the Gospels and modern-day miracles online.
Now, Carlo, who died of leukemia at age 15 in 2006, will become the world’s first millennial saint, Pope Francis and the College of Cardinals announced at the Vatican Monday.
The Vatican, which in late May attributed to Carlo the requisite second miracle necessary for sainthood, said he would likely be canonized during the Church’s 2025 Jubilee Year, a rich Catholic tradition that is expected to draw more than 30 million of the faithful to Rome.
Carlo, who taught himself computer programming as a young child by studying a university textbook, developed a popular database of miracles across the globe along with websites focusing on the Catholic faith.
“Carlo made his computer an instrument at the service of God and the internet a way to evangelize, spreading his love for the Holy Eucharist," reads the website of the 2023 World Youth Day in Lisbon, Portugal, of which Acutis was named a patron.
The miracles website has become a means of religious instruction for parishes throughout the world.
At a time when youths are bombarded by negativity and hate speech on social media, the Vatican says Carlo’s online ministry exemplified how technology and the internet can be employed to spread the Gospel.
"It is true that the digital world can expose you to the risk of self-absorption, isolation and empty pleasure,” Pope Francis wrote in 2018. "Carlo was well aware that the whole apparatus of communications, advertising and social networking can be used to lull us, to make us addicted to consumerism and buying the latest thing on the market, obsessed with our free time, caught up in negativity. Yet he knew how to use the new communications technology to transmit the Gospel, to communicate values and beauty."
Carlo began attending daily Mass at age 7 and inspired his mother, who had been a non-practicing Catholic, to return to the Church. He often urged his friends to attend Mass and confession.
Along with his devotion to the Eucharist and the Virgin Mary, Carlo loved dogs and enjoyed soccer and playing the saxophone and the video games Halo, Super Mario and Pokémon. But he limited himself to only an hour a week playing video games as a form of penance and spiritual discipline.
He often reached out to help the less fortunate, including homeless and poor people, giving them pocket money from his allowance, and when he received several video games as birthday gifts, he donated them all to children in Milan who had no toys.
He also defended and tried to console victims of bullying.
Speaking at The Catholic University of America in October 2023, Carlo’s mother, Antonia Salzano Acutis, said: “When you are close to somebody who really loves the Eucharist, this person becomes contagious, like a chain reaction because through the Eucharist, Jesus nourishes us. When we eat the source of love, it helps us to open up our hearts.
“Carlo taught me that the sacraments are not symbols. Carlo made me understand the real presence of God in the Eucharist. So he was for me like a little savior.”
And in the biography My Son Carlo, Carlo’s mother and journalist Paolo Rodari wrote: “This was his secret: that he had a constant, intimate relationship with Jesus. He wanted everyone he encountered to have this kind of relationship like he did. He did not consider it to be something just for him. He was convinced that this relationship was accessible to all."
The Vatican said the second miracle attributed to Carlo’s intercession involved a university student who suffered severe head trauma that required brain surgery after falling from a bike in Florence.
Doctors gave her very little chance of survival, but she quickly began to recover after her mother traveled to Assisi to pray at Carlo’s tomb for his intercession in 2022. She also left a letter describing her plea for her daughter’s recovery. The following day, her daughter began to move and partially regained her speech, and 10 days after her mother’s visit to Carlo’s tomb, a CT scan showed the hemorrhage on the woman’s brain had vanished, the Vatican said.
“Carlo taught me that the sacraments are not symbols. Carlo made me understand the real presence of God in the Eucharist. So he was for me like a little savior.” — Antonia Salzano Acutis, mother of Carlo Acutis
Pope Francis beatified Carlo in 2020 in Assisi, where the teen had made multiple pilgrimages to pay homage to a favorite saint, Francis of Assisi. At the time, the pontiff attributed the healing of a boy with a malformed pancreas to Carlo’s intercession after the child came into contact with one of his shirts.
In a 2020 Angelus address in St. Peter’s Square, Francis said of Carlo: “He did not settle into comfortable inaction, but grasped the needs of his time because in the weakest he saw the face of Christ. His witness shows today's young people that true happiness is found by putting God first and serving Him in our brothers, especially the least.”
In foreword to a biography of Carlo, Carlo Acutis: The First Millennial Saint by Nicola Gori, Cardinal Angelo Comastri quoted the teen as saying: “To always be close to Jesus, that’s my life plan. I'm happy to die because I've lived my life without wasting even a minute of it doing things that wouldn't have pleased God.”
Carlo was born in London in 1991 to Andrea Acutis, who ran a publishing company, and Antonia Salzano, who worked in the insurance company. The wealthy family moved to Milan when Acutis was an infant, and he attended the Jesuit Instituto Leone XIII high school.
"He had a deep faith and a particular devotion to the Eucharist," Gabriella Tona, director general of Leo XIII of the school, said in 2020.
At the same time, Tona said: "Being so normal is the main lesson that we can learn from him and communicate to his peers today.”
Initially, Carlo was buried in the Ternengo town cemetery in the Italian region of Piedmont. But in January 2007, his body was transferred to the cemetery in Assisi, the same town where St. Francis of Assisi is buried.
In 2019, Carlo’s body was exhumed and his remains were transferred to St. Mary Major Parish, also known as the Shrine of the Renunciation, in Assisi. There, his body is displayed inside a glass case.
Tens of thousands of pilgrims, many of them young people, have visited the church to pay homage to Carlo and seek his intercession.