What do you think about when you think of saints in the Catholic Church? Ascetics who spent their lives atop pillars? Otherwise ordinary women who had visions of Mary or Christ? The apostles?
Believe it or not one of the Catholic Church’s newest saints is to be a millennial computer programmer.
Carlo Acutis was born in 1991 in London and raised in Milan by his Italian family. He received his First Communion at the age of seven and regularly attended Mass and other religious services and events.
An otherwise normal young, boy Acutis created an online exhibit chronicling over 100 eucharistic miracles that the Catholic Church has acknowledged as genuine.
Sadly, Acutis died at the age of 15 after being diagnosed with acute leukaemia. At his request, his body was buried in a cemetery in the town of Assisi, due to his veneration of St Francis of Assisi, the same saint that inspired Pope Francis’ choice of name.
A few years after his death, friends of Acutis and a number of priests began lobbying for his inclusion in the pantheon of Catholic saints.
In 2018 Acutis’ body was transferred to a shrine in Assisi’s Santuario della Spogliazione. The Church also bestowed the title of “venerable” on Acutis due to the faithfulness he showed in life.
In 2020 he advanced to “blessed” after the Church determined that a Brazilian child was miraculously healed following prayers to Acutis on the child’s behalf. No scientific explanation was found for the healing of the child.
A second miracle was attributed to him when a Costa Rican student suffering from massive head trauma following a bicycle accident was completely healed after his mother prayed at Acutis’ tomb.
He was to be granted full sainthood at a special mass on 27 April this year, however the death of Pope Francis meant that the event will be postponed. No date has yet been given.
Rev Jacinto Bento, a Portuguese priest told AP, “It’s amazing this saint, a young person — we can propose him to our people to imitate because everybody can be a saint.”
