In a historic ceremony at the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV declared the Catholic Church’s first millennial saint, Carlo Acutis. The London-born Italian teenager, who died of leukemia in 2006 at the age of 15, was dubbed "God's Influencer" for his work spreading the faith online. Acutis’s modern appeal, with his preserved body dressed in jeans …
God’s Influencer: The Catholic Church Canonizes Its First Millennial Saint
In a historic ceremony at the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV declared the Catholic Church’s first millennial saint, Carlo Acutis. The London-born Italian teenager, who died of leukemia in 2006 at the age of 15, was dubbed “God’s Influencer” for his work spreading the faith online. Acutis’s modern appeal, with his preserved body dressed in jeans and Nike trainers, has inspired thousands, particularly young people, to flock to his tomb in Assisi.
A Life of Modern Faith and Kindness
Despite his parents not being particularly devout, Carlo Acutis developed an unwavering faith, attending daily mass and showing great kindness to the homeless and bullied children. A self-taught coder and a fan of computer games, he used his passion for IT to document miracles and other aspects of Catholicism online. Acutis’s mother, Antonia Salzano, noted that her son’s canonization is proof that “we are all called to be saints.”
The Path to Sainthood
The canonization process for Acutis was based on two miracles attributed to him. The first involved the healing of a Brazilian child with a rare pancreatic malformation, and the second was the recovery of a Costa Rican student who was seriously injured in an accident. In both cases, family members had prayed for his intercession. Pier Giorgio Frassati, a mountaineering enthusiast who died in 1925, was also declared a saint at the same ceremony, with the Vatican recognizing his second miracle as the unexplained healing of a young American man.
