The young girl waited patiently for her turn in line outside the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Assisi, to venerate the glass shrine containing the body of Carlo Acutis. He is dressed in a blue hoodie, jeans, and sneakers. His face is covered with a wax mask, and the people passing by pause with reverence before the relic of the teenager who earned the nickname “the influencer of God.”
Today, the Vatican canonizes this boy who lived to spread the word of Jesus using the internet—creating websites and later being attributed with miracles after his death, which were recognized by the Catholic Church and the late Pope Francis. His heart is kept in a golden reliquary at the Cathedral of San Rufino, but, according to his parents, it was a heart big enough to hold the whole world. He is the first saint of the new millennium.
Acutis will be declared a saint today by Pope Leo in a grand ceremony in St. Peter’s Square. Thousands of faithful are expected to witness the canonization via giant screens, both at the Vatican and in his hometown of Assisi.
An angel on earth
Until the age of seven, Carlo was an ordinary child, born in London where his parents lived and worked. He simply showed an early interest in technology, until the day his life changed forever—when he received Holy Communion for the first time.
He wanted to go to church the next day and the day after that. As his mother told Sky News, “We were lucky because we had moved to a neighborhood in Milan with many churches nearby.”
The boy became passionate about the Mass and Eucharistic miracles—those relating to the presence of Christ in the Eucharist—but he was also a child who played football with his friends and collected Pokémon.
He developed exceptional computer skills and gradually began to create websites dedicated to the Eucharist and its miracles, which gained devoted readers in many countries around the world.
He also did it for another reason: he didn’t hear priests talking about these miracles during Mass, nor about the verified apparitions of the Virgin Mary in various places around the world. This made him even more passionate.
The intuition
That passion never left him. Even Pope Francis cited him as an example of a child who, instead of being led astray by the darker side of the internet, used it to spread the word of God. In 2006, according to his mother, Carlo sensed that something was coming into his life. He wasn’t particularly disturbed by it. In a video found on his computer, he calmly says: “When I weigh 70 kilos, it will be my fate to die.”
What began as a simple flu left the 15-year-old severely weak. One day, when he could no longer move, the family doctor told them to take him to the hospital. There, it was diagnosed that Carlo was suffering from leukemia.
“Ultimately, God gave me a weakness,” he said, completely calm, showing no sadness or sorrow for his illness. Just hours after being admitted, he fell into a coma—smiling.
He never woke up and died two days later. Immediately after his funeral, his mother began hearing of miracles being attributed to her son—the “influencer of God” who died smiling and is now being canonized by the Pope.
