"Patron Saint of the Internet" Will Be Canonized in April
Carlo Acutis, who documented miracles online, will become the first millennial saint. He's one of two young Italians set for canonization during Jubilee 2025.
By Gary Gately
Carlo Acutis — the late Italian teenage computer programming prodigy known as the “patron saint of the internet” for spreading the Gospel and documenting miracles online — will become the first millennial saint when he is canonized in April, Pope Francis said Wednesday.
Acutis, who died of leukemia in 2006 at age 15, will be canonized at a Mass at the Vatican during the April 25-27 Jubilee of Teenagers, part of the Church’s Jubilee 2025 year, a rich, centuries-old Catholic tradition that is expected to draw more than 30 million of the faithful to Rome.
Francis also announced Wednesday that Pier Giorgio Frassati, an avid mountaineer known for tirelessly serving the poor, the sick, the homeless, orphans and wounded soldiers, would be canonized during the Jubilee of Youth July 28-August 3.
Acutis taught himself computer programming as a young child by studying a university textbook and later developed a popular database of miracles across the globe, along with websites focusing on the Catholic faith.
At a time when youths are bombarded by negativity and hate speech on social media, Acutis’ 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."
In May, Francis attributed the second requisite miracle to the intercession of Acutis, who was born in London but grew up in Milan. The Vatican said the miracle involved a university student who suffered severe head trauma that required brain surgery after falling from a bike in Florence.
Doctors gave her little chance of survival, but she quickly began to recover after her mother traveled to Assisi to pray at Acutis’ tomb for his intercession in 2022. The mother also left a letter describing her plea for her daughter’s recovery.
Ten days after her mother’s visit to Acutis’ tomb, a CT scan showed the hemorrhage on her daughter’s brain had vanished.
Pope Francis beatified Acutis 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 Acutis’ intercession after the child came into contact with one of his shirts.
Pier Giorgio Frassati
Frassati died at age 24 of polio he is believed to have contracted while ministering in the slums of Turin, Italy.
He demonstrated his dedication to the Church while being educated by the Jesuits as a boy, despite the disapproval of his non-religious parents — his father, founder of the Italian newspaper La Stampa, and his mother, a well-known painter.
Often, Frassati’s agnostic father, Alfredo Frassati, would find him asleep on his knees, praying the rosary, Frassati’s late sister Luciana Frassati Gawronska wrote in her 2001 biography of him, A Man of the Beatitudes: Pier Giorgio Frassati. He sometimes spent entire nights in Eucharistic adoration.
After visiting the original burial site in 1989, Pope John Paul II said: “I wanted to pay homage to a young man who was able to witness to Christ with singular effectiveness in this century of ours. When I was a young man, I, too, felt the beneficial influence of his example and, as a student, I was impressed by the force of his testimony."
John Paul II called Frassati a “man of the eight Beatitudes” who was “entirely immersed in the mystery of God and totally dedicated to the constant service of his neighbor.”
In December 1989, John Paul II granted final approval to a decree on a miracle attributed to Frassati.
The miracle involved the cure of Domenico Sellan in 1933. He was near death, suffering tuberculosis of the spine and paralysis at age 40 when a priest brought him a relic and photo of Frassati and asked for intercession. Sellan lived 35 more years in good health before dying in 1989.
John Paul II beatified Frassati in Saint Peter's Square on May 20, 1990. In his homily, John Paul quoted St. Peter: "Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts. Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope.”
The late pontiff added: “In our century, Pier Giorgio Frassati, whom I have the joy of declaring Blessed today in the name of the Church, incarnated these words of St. Peter in his own life. The power of the spirit of truth, united to Christ, made him a modern witness to the hope which springs from the Gospel and to the grace of salvation which works in human hearts. Thus he became a living witness and courageous defender of this hope in the name of Christian youth of the 20th century.”
The Vatican has yet to announce the second miracle attributed to Frassati, which made his canonization possible, but is expected to do so.