The pope canonized Carlo Acutis, who died in 2006, during a Mass attended by tens of thousands of people, many of them millennials and couples with young children.
VATICAN CITY - Pope Leo XIV declared a 15-year-old computer whiz the Catholic Church’s first millennial saint Sunday, giving the next generation of Catholics a relatable role model who used technology to spread the faith and earn the nickname “God’s influencer.
” Leo canonized Carlo Acutis, who died in 2006, during an open-air Mass in St. Peter’s Square before an estimated 80,000 people, many of them millennials and couples with young children. During the first saint-making Mass of his pontificate, Leo also canonized another popular Italian figure who died young, Pier Giorgio Frassati.“The greatest risk in life is to waste it outside of God’s plan,” Leo said in his homily. The new saints “are an invitation to all of us, especially young people, not to squander our lives, but to direct them upwards and make them masterpieces.” FILE - An image of 15-year-old Carlo Acutis, an Italian boy who died in 2006 of leukemia, is unveiled during his beatification ceremony celebrated by Cardinal Agostino Vallini in the St. Francis Basilica, in Assisi, Italy, Saturday, Oct. 10, 2020.Acutis was born on May 3, 1991, in London to a wealthy but not particularly observant Catholic family. They moved back to Milan soon after he was born and he enjoyed a typical, happy childhood, albeit marked by increasingly intense religious devotion. Acutis was particularly interested in computer science and devoured college-level books on programming even as a youngster. He earned the nickname “God’s Influencer,” thanks to his main tech legacy: a multilingual website documenting so-called Eucharistic miracles recognized by the church, a project he completed at a time when the development of such sites was the domain of professionals. He was known to spend hours in prayer before the Eucharist each day. The Catholic hierarchy has been trying to promote the practice of Eucharistic adoration because, according to polls, most Catholics don’t believe Christ is physically present in the Eucharistic hosts. But Acutis limited himself to an hour of video games a week, apparently deciding long before TikTok that human relationships were far more important than virtual ones. That discipline and restraint has proven appealing to the Catholic hierarchy, which has sounded the alarm about the dangers of today’s tech-driven society. In October 2006, at age 15, Acutis fell ill with what was quickly diagnosed as acute leukemia. Within days, he was dead. He was entombed in Assisi, which known for its association with another popular saint, St. Francis.In the years since his death, young Catholics have flocked by the millions to Assisi, where they can see the young Acutis through a glass-sided tomb, dressed in jeans, Nike sneakers and a sweatshirt. He seems as if he’s sleeping, and questions have swirled about how his body was so well preserved, especially since parts of his heart have even toured the world as relics. Both saint-making ceremonies had been scheduled for earlier this year, but were postponed following Pope Francis’ death in April. Francis had fervently pushed the Acutis sainthood case forward, convinced that the church needed someone like him to attract young Catholics to the faith while addressing the promises and perils of the digital age. “It’s like I can maybe not be as great as Carlo may be, but I can be looking after him and be like, ‘What would Carlo do?’” said Leo Kowalsky, an 8th grader at a Chicago school attached to the Blessed Carlo Acutis Parish. Kowalsky said he was particularly excited that his own namesake — Pope Leo — would be canonizing the patron of his school. “It’s kind of all mashed up into one thing, so it is a joy to be a part of,” Kowalsky said in an interview last week. Much of Acutis’ popularity is thanks to a concerted campaign by the Vatican to give the next generation of faithful a “saint next door” who was ordinary but did extraordinary things in life. In Acutis, they found a relatable tech-savvy millennial — the term used to describe a person born roughly between 1981 and 1996 who was the first generation to reach adulthood in the new millennium. The Vatican said 36 cardinals, 270 bishops and hundreds of priests had signed up to celebrate the Mass along with Leo in a sign of the saints’ enormous appeal to the hierarchy and ordinary faithful alike.A hour before the Mass, St. Peter’s Square was already full with pilgrims, many of them young millennial Italians, many with toddlers in strollers. “I learned from different people what his professors, his teachers said about his joy and the light he carried around him,” said Leopoldo Antimi, a 27-year-old Roman who got to the square early to secure a spot. “So for me personally as an Italian, even on social networks that are used so much, it is important to have him as an influencer.” Matthew Schmalz, professor of religious studies at Holy Cross college in Worcester, Massachusetts, said Acutis’ canonization extends the church tradition of popular piety to the digital age. “He becomes an emblem or model of how Catholics should approach and use the digital world--with discipline and with a focus on traditional Catholic spirituality that defies the passage of time,” he said in statement. “He is a new saint of simplicity for the ever complex digital landscape of contemporary Catholicism.” Frassati, the other saint being canonized Sunday, lived from 1901-1925, when he died at age 24 of polio. 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Pope Leo XIV First Millennial Saint Pope Declares Teen Saint Carlo Acutis God’S Influencer
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Pope Leo XIV is set to declare a 15-year-old computer whiz a saintPope Leo XIV is set to declare a 15-year-old computer whiz, Carlo Acutis, the first millennial saint on Sunday, giving the next generation of Catholics a relatable, modern-day role model who used technology to spread the faith and earn the nickname “God’s influencer.
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