You wouldn’t often expect to find the next Mother Teresa on an early-aughts blog, but that’s exactly where Carlo Acutis, who will soon be the first millennial saint in the Catholic church, gained notoriety for his miraculous photo documentation.
Acutis’ canonization, the last stage in a procedure that can occasionally take decades, is now possible, according to the Holy See, which announced on Thursday that Pope Francis had acknowledged a second miracle connected to the man. It will list the internet evangelizer, who passed away in 2006 at the age of 15 from leukemia, among the thousands of saints declared by the church.
The Catholic Church has found it difficult to attract young people as a result of member alienation caused by scandals including sexual abuse, criticism of its antiquated traditions, and views on gender equality. By permitting blessings for same-sex couples and urging theologians to “demasculinize” the church, among other measures to promote tolerance within the highly hierarchical organization, Pope Francis has frequently drawn criticism from conservatives for his efforts.
The Holy See’s official news portal, Vatican News, revealed several breakthroughs regarding the canonization of new saints on Thursday. However, the most intriguing development for younger Catholics, according to Vatican News, is undoubtedly the validation of a miracle credited to Blessed Carlo Acutis.
Acutis, who was born in London in 1991, has gained popularity due to his religious beliefs and thorough study of miracles, which he shared on the internet. He was dubbed “God’s Influencer” by a Catholic journal, and he was characterized as a teenager with “strong faith and a weakness for Nutella” by another website. He was a “natural joker,” loved video games, and played soccer, according to Vatican News.
Following Acutis’s beatification in 2020, a large image of the adolescent, which featured him sporting a red polo shirt and a knapsack, drew the attention of white-cloaked Holy See authorities. According to the Catholic News Service, an estimated 117,000 people visited the grave the following year where his remains is on display along with the Nike sneakers, pants, and track jacket he was buried in.
Acutis started looking into Eucharistic miracles at the age of eleven. According to Catholic tradition, the bread and wine given at Mass assume the biological properties of human flesh or blood, symbolizing the body and blood of Christ. His project’s exhibition was then exhibited in hundreds of churches worldwide.
A website promoting his sainthood claims that those around him were “astonished by his ability to understand the hidden secrets of computing, which are normally accessible only to those who have studied at university level.” Pope Francis noted of Acutis during his beatification that he “grasped the needs of his time.”
According to the USC Dornsife website, a deceased person with a reputation for “exceptional holiness” can be declared a “Servant of God,” and the process of becoming a saint usually starts when a bishop launches an investigation into that person’s life. They will be able to obtain the following title, “Venerable,” with more investigation. The Vatican often requires that a person execute at least one miracle in order to be declared “Blessed” or beatified. Usually, two miracles are needed to be canonized.
The second miracle was purportedly related to a Costa Rican woman who, in 2022, prayed at the tomb of Acutis in Assisi, Italy, after her daughter had fallen from her bicycle and suffered terrible head injuries for which the doctors had given her little chance of survival. This miracle was revealed on Thursday. Days after the woman’s visit to the tomb, a CT scan reportedly “proved that her [daughter’s] hemorrhage had disappeared,” according to Vatican News.
The church acknowledged Acutis’s first miracle in 2020, when a Brazilian boy was said to have recovered from a congenital pancreatic malformation after his mother prayed to him.
The dean of Santa Clara University’s Jesuit School of Theology, Agbonkhianmeghe Orobator, expressed his delight at the news of Carlo Acutis’s canonization and mentioned that he had just visited a diocese in California where youth make pilgrimages and perform community service in Acutis’s honor.
According to Orobator, “his canonization shows that youth is a gift to the Church and the world, not a barrier to holiness.”