Italian Teen Known As 'God's Influencer' On Path to Sainthood
Pope Francis recognized a miracle attributed to Carlo Acutis.
By Gary Gately
An Italian teen known as “God’s influencer” for spreading the Catholic faith online, including by documenting miracles in an online database, is on the path to becoming the first millennial saint now that Pope Francis has attributed a second miracle to him.
Carlo Acutis, who was born in London but grew up in Milan and died of leukemia in 2006 at the age of 15, began attending daily Mass at age 7 and loved to pray the rosary.
“To always be close to Jesus, that’s my life plan,” he said, according to Cardinal Angelo Comastri’s foreword to a biography of Carlo, Carlo Acutis: The First Millennial Saint by Nicola Gori.
Comastri also wrote that the self-taught internet prodigy said, “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's mother, Antonia Acutis, told The New York Times in a 2020 interview: “Carlo was the light answer to the dark side of the web.” She said his life showed “how the internet can be used for good, to spread good things.”
After he died, she told the Times, people across the globe told her about medical miracles, including cures for cancer, that occurred after they prayed for her son’s intercession.
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, and she was later transferred to a rehabilitation facility, the Vatican said.
Pope Francis beatified Carlo in 2020 in Assisi, where the millennial had made multiple pilgrimages.
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.
Along with his devotion to the Eucharist and the Virgin Mary, Carlo enjoyed soccer and playing the video games Halo, Super Mario and Pokémon.
He often reached out to help the less fortunate, including homeless and poor people, and he put his computer programming skills to good use by managing websites for his parish and a Vatican academy.
At Carlo’s beatification Mass at the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, Cardinal Agostino Vallini said in his homily: "His ardent desire was also that of attracting as many people to Jesus, making himself herald of the Gospel above all with the example of life. Love for the Eucharist was the foundation that kept alive his relationship with God. He often said, 'The Eucharist is my highway to heaven.’"
Francis said Thursday that he would convene a meeting of cardinals to consider Carlo’s sainthood. No date has been set for Carlo’s canonization.