This Italian teenager was known as “God

Millions of young Catholics mass the small Italian city in the center of Asís to pay tribute to Carlo Acutis, the Italian adolescent known as “influencer of God.” On Sunday, the 15 -year -old will become the first Millennial Holy.

Dressed in jeans, Nike sneakers and a sweatshirt, with your hands together around a rosary, Acutis has generated a reputation close to a rock star among the faithful young people such as those that the Catholic Church has not seen in years.

Those who cannot do it in person can see the comings and goings on a webcam pointed to their tomb, a level of Internet accessibility that is not offered even to the potatoes buried in the Basilica of San Pedro.

Who was Carlo Acutis?

Acutis was born on May 3, 1991 in London, son of a rich Italian family. They returned to Milan shortly after he was born, and according to the reports, he enjoyed a typical and happy childhood that was marked by his increasingly intense religious devotion.

He launched and administered a website for his local parish and then in an academy based in the Vatican. He also used his computer skills to create an online database of Eucharistic miracles worldwide, available in almost 20 languages. The site provides information on the 196 apparently inexplicable events in the history of the Church related to the Eucharist, which the faithful believe that it is the body of Christ.

“Carlo was aware that the entire communications, advertising and social networks can be used to rush, to make us addicts to consumerism and buy the latest in the market,” wrote the late Pope Francis in a 2019 document. “However, he knew how to use the new communications technology to transmit the gospel, to communicate values ​​and beauty.”

It was known that Acutis spent hours in prayer before the Eucharist every day, a practice known as Eucharistic worship.

“This was the fixed appointment of his day,” said his mother, Antonia Salzano, in a documentary that will be broadcast on Friday night at the United States Seminar in Rome.

In October 2006, at age 15, he got sick with what was rapidly diagnosed as acute leukemia. He died in Monza, Italy, a few days after his diagnosis. His body was buried in Assisi and is exhibited along with other relics linked to him.

Fasting Holiness

The Acutis road to Santhood began more than 10 years ago for the initiative of a group of priests and friends, and formally took off shortly after Francis began his papacy in 2013.

Acutis was named “venerable” in 2018 after the Church recognized its virtuous life, and its body was taken to a sanctuary in the Sanctuary of the Spagliazione in Assisi, Italy. It was an important place linked to the life of San Francisco.

The teenager was beatified in 2020, the first step for holiness, after Acutis was attributed to the healing of a Brazilian child of a congenital disease that affects his pancreas.

Last year, Francis approved the The second miracle is needed for Acutis to become a saint. The second miracle involved the healing of a university student in Florence who had a brain bleeding after suffering head trauma in a bicycle accident.

Francis and the cardinals residing in Rome formally approved their canonization in July 2024.

The canonization, the first for Pope Leo XIV, was Initially scheduled for the beginning of this year But it was postponed below Death of Francis in April. Leo will declare Acutis a saint along with another popular Italian, Pier Giorgio Frassati, who also died young.

A call to youth

For his fans, Acutis was a common child who did extraordinary things: a typical Milan teenager who went to school, played football and loved animals. But he also brought food to the poor, attended the Mass daily and took his parents less than those who return to the Church.

“When I read his story for the first time, it was like impressive for me, because from a very early age, he felt really attracted to Jesus Christ and would go to Mass all the time,” Sona Harrison, an eighth grade of the School of San Juan Berchmans, which is part of the blessed Carlo Acutis in the parish of the northwest of Chicago in the Associated parish. “I feel that it is much more identifiable, and I definitely feel that I am closer to God when I read about Him.”

During the Mass this week before the canonization, the students were processed in the chapel under an Acutis banner that carried things that could have taken: a football ball, a laptop and a backpack.

“He fed the poor, took care of the poor,” said David Cameron, 9, who called Acutis “a great man.” Cameron, Sonic, Minecraft and Halo fan, also found inspiration in Acutis’s love for video games, and astonished by Acutis’s moderation.

“He played video games for only an hour a week, which I don’t think I can do,” he told the AP.

• Catholic church