Carlo Acutis: the 15-year-old ‘God influencer’ who will become the first ‘millennial’ saint

In dialogue with El Comercio, Juan Fonseca, professor of Theology of Religions at the Universidad del Pacífico, highlights that the canonization of Carlo It is not only a “gesture of sympathy and rapprochement with the new generations”, but also shows “quite honestly how the administration of Pope Francis has shown a clear intention to value the ways in which new generations are approaching the faith, as well as a clear purpose by the church itself to modernize its message”.

In this regard, Fonseca also highlights that the canonization of Acutis serves as a recognition by the Catholic Church of how popular religiosity values ​​this type of characters, who from everyday life cultivate and develop a piety aligned with this view that Francisco now proposes a “solidarity, austere and simple Catholic faith in which from ordinary life one can find God.”

Who was the ‘cyberapostle’?

Carlo Acutis was born on May 3, 1991 in the city of London, son of Andrea Acutis and Antonia Salzano, two Italians who were temporarily residing in the United Kingdom for work reasons. Shortly after his arrival into the world, his parents took him back to Lombardy, a region in northern Italy where his family came from, and there he spent most of his childhood in a traditional but not particularly religious family.

According to testimony from his family and acquaintances, from an early age he showed a fascination with Catholic beliefs, particularly with the sacrament of the Eucharist. which at some point he called his “highway to heaven”having his first communion at the age of seven. He also presented an intense devotion to the Virgin Mary, whom he described as the “only woman in his life.”

Outside of religious subjects, Carlo also had a great interest in technology, showing great skill in computer programming, video editing, and creating web pages. These skills, so common in the current generations of ‘influencers’ who currently swarm on social networks, were used at the beginning of this 21st century by the young man to transmit his faith, creating websites with testimonies and images that tell the story of some saints he admired, as well as miracles and apparitions of the Virgin Mary.

But his ‘magnum opus’ did not occur only in the digital world. Titled “Eucharistic Miracles in the World”, it is an exhibition the result of four years of work that compiles images and historical descriptions of 136 events recognized by the Catholic Church.

“He was convinced that people could thus realize that truly in the host and in the consecrated wine are the body and blood of Christ.“, his mother told the publication Comunicación y Liberación. “That there is nothing symbolic, but rather it is the real possibility of meeting Him.” The exhibition has visited more than 10,000 parishes around the world and can also be found online here.

The death of Carlo Acutis was sudden and unexpected and it all began in September 2006, when what seemed like a simple flu took him to the San Gerardo Hospital in Monza. It was not a cold, but a fulminant leukemia that ended the teenager’s life at the age of 15.. Thus, after asking for the anointing of the sick, Carlo Acutis died on October 12.

Subsequently, and in accordance with his last wishes, his body was transferred to Assisi, birthplace of Saint Francis, one of the saints he most admired, and since 2022 it has been exhibited for the faithful who come in person and through the website. via a live internet broadcast, quite appropriate for someone who was posthumously dubbed “God’s ‘influencer’.”

The path to canonization

The news of Carlo Acutis’ death traveled around the world, moving the community of believers and generating devotees inspired by his example. On July 5, 2018 he was declared “venerable” by the Church after he was credited with the miraculous healing of a Brazilian boy who was cured of a rare congenital abnormality of the pancreas after his family asked for intercession before a relic of Carlo, a piece of his pajamas. In 2020, the same miracle led to Acutis being declared blessed, the first step to sainthood.

The second miracle was announced in May of this year, although it occurred in July 2022 around a 21-year-old Costa Rican university student who suffered a serious head injury after a bicycle accident. According to the Holy See, doctors had predicted that his hopes of survival were almost zero, but The young woman recovered after the victim’s mother went to Acutis’ grave to ask for intercession for her daughter..

With this, Acutis broke the mold by becoming not only one of the youngest saints of modern times, but also one of the fastest in history, achieving sainthood a little more than 18 years after his death, an extremely long period of time. short considering that the other person whose canonization was announced this week, the Catholic mountaineer and activist Pier Giorgio Frassati, died approximately a century ago.

Dissemination through networks

“I agree that it has been faster than usual and I think it has to do, on the one hand, with the Vatican’s greater appreciation of the type of figures that Carlo Acutis represents,” says Juan Fonseca. “But it is also interesting that in this case the two testimonies of miracles necessary for canonization have appeared and have been verified quickly, So in addition to the priority on the part of the curia, we have also seen that the faithful have mobilized quite a bit around this character..”

“So, I think it has been a combination of opportunity with what seems the search of new generations to find signs of holiness no longer in classical figures, but in people like them involved in modernity”, he considers.

The professor highlights that the idea of ​​the saints is not only to create another holiday, but the way in which the Catholic Church seeks to present exemplary lives to its believers to inspire them to dedicate themselves to God. “So it is a message to tell the youngest that it is not wrong in principle to use new technologies, that they are a very useful means of transmitting a message of faith, something in which the Catholic Church is quite lagging behind other Christian confessions.”, he thinks. “I believe that this can be a push for new generations of young Catholic leaders to enter more into new technologies, social networks, and take advantage of them as a new path for the dissemination of the Christian message.”