Carlo Acutis

Based on Wikipedia: Carlo Acutis

In September 2025, the Catholic Church did something it had never done before: it canonized a saint who had his own PlayStation, browsed the early internet, and edited videos on his computer. Carlo Acutis, who died in 2006 at the age of fifteen, became what the press quickly dubbed "the first millennial saint" and "God's Influencer." The juxtaposition seems almost absurd—a teenager in jeans and sneakers joining the ranks of medieval mystics, desert hermits, and martyrs who faced lions in Roman arenas.

Yet this is precisely what makes his story so fascinating, and so contested.

A Wealthy Boy in Milan

Carlo Acutis was born on May 3, 1991, in London—but don't let that fool you into thinking he was British. His parents, Andrea Acutis and Antonia Salzano, were wealthy Italians who happened to be working abroad at the time. His grandfather was Carlo Giuseppe Maria Acutis, an Italian businessman. Within weeks of Carlo's birth, the family moved back to Italy and settled in Milan, where they would raise him among the privileges that substantial wealth provides.

Both sides of the family had money. His father's family worked in the Italian insurance industry. His mother's family ran a publishing company. His maternal great-grandmother had been born in the United States and came from a family of landowners in New York. Carlo grew up with nannies caring for him, a household staff that included a driver, and family boats docked at seaside resorts.

This matters for understanding both his story and the controversy surrounding his canonization. Saints have come from wealth before—Francis of Assisi, one of Carlo's heroes, famously renounced his father's fortune. But questions would later be raised about whether the Acutis family's resources helped accelerate Carlo's path to sainthood in ways that might not be available to, say, a pious teenager from a favela in São Paulo.

An Unusual Piety

Here's the first strange thing about Carlo Acutis: his parents weren't particularly religious. His mother Antonia had grown up in a secular family. She had been confirmed as a Catholic while in college and married in the church, as many cultural Catholics do, but she didn't attend Mass. The faith was, for her, more a matter of tradition than conviction.

Then her son started asking questions.

According to his mother's testimony, Carlo displayed an interest in Catholic religious practice from an early age—and his persistent curiosity eventually brought her back to active faith. This reversal of the usual pattern, where parents pass religion to children, became a central part of the narrative surrounding Carlo. The child had evangelized the parent.

When Carlo was three, his maternal grandfather Antonio Salzano died. Several days before the death, Carlo had been present when his grandfather received what Catholics call the Anointing of the Sick—the sacrament traditionally given to those near death, which involves a priest anointing the ill person with blessed oil while praying for their healing or peaceful passing. According to family accounts, the grandfather later appeared to Carlo in a dream asking for prayer.

Shortly after the death, while his grandmother was watching him, Carlo put on his coat and asked to be taken to church. When she asked why, he said he wanted to pray for his grandfather, who "had gone to see Jesus."

He was three years old.

The Computer Whiz

Carlo Acutis was, by all accounts, genuinely gifted with computers. This was the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the internet was still relatively new and web design was a skill that most adults hadn't mastered. Carlo taught himself programming and web design, eventually becoming skilled enough that his parish priest asked him to create a website for Santa Maria Segreta, the family's church in Milan.

A priest at his Jesuit high school also asked him to create a website promoting volunteering. This project won a national competition called "Sarai volontario"—Italian for "You will be a volunteer."

But Carlo's most ambitious project combined his two passions: technology and Catholic devotion. He created a website dedicated to cataloguing every reported Eucharistic miracle in the world.

A brief explanation for non-Catholics: the Eucharist is the central sacrament of Catholic worship, in which bread and wine are believed to become the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ—not symbolically, but literally, though the physical appearances of bread and wine remain. This doctrine, called transubstantiation, has been Catholic teaching since the medieval period. Eucharistic miracles are reported cases where the bread or wine allegedly changed in visible ways—bleeding, transforming into apparent flesh, remaining preserved for centuries, or displaying other supernatural signs.

Carlo spent two and a half years researching these reported miracles and building his website, involving his entire family in the project. He also compiled information on Marian apparitions—reported appearances of the Virgin Mary—that had been officially recognized by the Catholic Church. The website launched on October 4, 2006, the Feast of Saint Francis.

Carlo was in the hospital at the time. He would be dead within eight days.

A Swift and Brutal End

Around October 1, 2006, Carlo developed what seemed like a routine illness—an inflammation of the throat. His parents took him to a doctor, who diagnosed parotitis (inflammation of the salivary glands, commonly known as mumps when caused by that specific virus) and dehydration. A second doctor, a family friend, confirmed the diagnosis.

Then things got worse. The pain intensified. Blood appeared in his urine.

By Sunday, October 8, Carlo was too weak to get out of bed for Mass—a significant detail for a boy who had attended Mass and Eucharistic adoration as often as he could. He was taken to a specialist clinic, where doctors delivered devastating news: Carlo had acute promyelocytic leukemia, a cancer of the blood and bone marrow.

Acute promyelocytic leukemia, or APL, is a subtype of acute myeloid leukemia that causes rapid accumulation of immature blood cells in the bone marrow. Today, with modern treatment including a medication derived from arsenic, APL is actually one of the more treatable forms of leukemia, with cure rates above 90% in some studies. But treatment must begin quickly, and in 2006, the options were more limited. Carlo was rushed to intensive care and put on a ventilator. He was transferred to San Gerardo Hospital north of Milan, one of only three hospitals in Italy equipped to treat his condition.

The prognosis was grim. The doctors gave him little chance of recovery.

What happened next became central to his canonization cause. According to witnesses, Carlo did not rage against his fate or sink into despair. When a nurse came to care for him, he asked her not to wake his parents since they were already tired and he didn't want to worry them further. He declared that he was offering his suffering for Pope Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church. When doctors asked if he was in great pain, he reportedly replied: "There are people who suffer much more than me."

His final words to his mother, according to her testimony, were:

Mom, don't be afraid. Since Jesus became a man, death has become the passage towards life, and we don't need to flee it. Let us prepare ourselves to experience something extraordinary in the eternal life.

Carlo fell into a coma. After a cerebral hemorrhage, he was declared brain dead on October 11, 2006. He was officially pronounced dead the following evening at 6:45 PM.

He was fifteen years old.

The Road to Sainthood

For those unfamiliar with how Catholic canonization works, a brief overview: becoming an officially recognized saint is a lengthy legal process, often taking centuries. The Church conducts formal investigations into the candidate's life, writings, and reputation for holiness. The candidate must be shown to have lived a life of "heroic virtue"—meaning they practiced faith, hope, charity, and other virtues to an extraordinary degree.

But virtue alone isn't enough. The Church also typically requires evidence of miracles—specifically, miracles that occurred after the candidate's death, attributed to their intercession. The theology here is that a dead person cannot perform miracles themselves, but can intercede with God on behalf of those who pray to them. If someone prays to a deceased person and an otherwise inexplicable healing occurs, this is taken as evidence that the deceased person is indeed in heaven and has God's ear.

The typical process has several stages. First, the candidate is named a "Servant of God," indicating that a formal cause for canonization has been opened. Then, if their virtues are confirmed, they are declared "Venerable." After one confirmed miracle, they are "beatified" and given the title "Blessed." After a second miracle, they are "canonized" and officially declared a Saint.

Carlo's cause moved unusually fast.

The Archdiocese of Milan opened his cause on October 12, 2012—exactly six years after his death. Pope Francis declared him Venerable in July 2018, confirming his heroic virtue. Then came the first miracle.

The Brazilian Boy and the Pancreas

On the anniversary of Carlo's death in Campo Grande, Brazil—a city that serves as the capital of the state of Mato Grosso do Sul—a woman named Luciana Vianna brought her son Mattheus to Mass. The boy suffered from a congenital defect called an annular pancreas, in which the pancreas wraps around the duodenum (the first section of the small intestine) in a ring shape, obstructing it. This made eating extremely difficult; Mattheus had been on an all-liquid diet.

Before the Mass, Luciana had prayed a novena asking for Carlo's intercession. A novena is a traditional Catholic devotion consisting of nine consecutive days of prayer for a specific intention. During the prayer service following Mass, Mattheus kissed a piece of Carlo's clothing—what Catholics call a "relic"—and asked that he "should not throw up as much."

According to the testimony submitted to the Vatican, immediately after Mass, Mattheus told his mother he felt healed and asked for solid food when they got home. His doctors subsequently confirmed, via ultrasound, that his pancreas appeared normal.

The Vatican's medical board examined the case in November 2019 and gave a positive opinion. Pope Francis confirmed the miracle's authenticity in February 2020, and Carlo's beatification was scheduled. Then COVID-19 shut down Italy, and the ceremony was postponed until October 2020, when it was held at the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi.

For the second miracle, the case involved a young Costa Rican woman named Valeria Valverde who fell off her bicycle in Florence, Italy, in 2022 and suffered a severe brain hemorrhage. Doctors reportedly gave her a low chance of survival. Her mother, Lilliana, prayed for Carlo's intercession and visited his tomb. According to the testimony, Valeria began breathing independently that same day and was able to walk the next day.

Pope Francis recognized this as a second miracle in May 2024. Carlo Acutis was canonized on September 7, 2025, alongside Pier Giorgio Frassati, another young Italian who had died decades earlier.

The Body in the Glass Case

If you visit the Sanctuary of the Spoliation in Assisi today, you can see Carlo Acutis's body displayed in a glass case. He appears to be lying peacefully, wearing jeans and a tracksuit top, looking much as he did in photographs from his life.

This requires some explanation, because the display is not quite what it appears.

In Catholic tradition, some saints' bodies are said to be "incorrupt"—miraculously preserved from decay without embalming, as a sign of their holiness. Famous examples include Bernadette Soubirous of Lourdes, whose body allegedly remains flexible and lifelike more than a century after her death, and Padre Pio, the 20th-century mystic whose body was placed on display in 2008.

Carlo's body is not incorrupt in this sense. According to the rector of Santa Maria Maggiore in Assisi, where the tomb is housed, Carlo's body was discovered "fully integral"—meaning it had not completely decomposed—but not intact. What visitors see is actually Carlo's body encased in wax molded to look like his final appearance. This is, the Church clarifies, a common way of presenting saints' bodies so that pilgrims can see how the person looked shortly after death.

The distinction matters because some initial press coverage implied that Carlo's preserved appearance was itself miraculous, which the Church has not claimed.

The Skeptics

Not everyone is convinced by Carlo's canonization, and the doubters include both secular observers and some of the Catholic faithful.

The core question is straightforward: what exactly did Carlo Acutis do that was so extraordinary?

Most canonized saints fall into recognizable categories. Some were martyrs who died for their faith. Some were founders of religious orders who transformed Church institutions. Some spent decades serving the poor, the sick, or the imprisoned. Some received mystical experiences—visions, stigmata, the ability to bilocate—that marked them as channels of divine power. Some wrote theological works that shaped Catholic thought for centuries.

Carlo Acutis made websites about Eucharistic miracles and was kind to his family's household staff.

This is not meant dismissively. Being kind, devout, and generous at fifteen is genuinely admirable. But as a commentator for the Catholic Review noted, his short life offered few "extraordinary actions" in the sense that phrase has traditionally meant for saints.

A report by The Economist interviewed childhood friends of Carlo who recalled him as kind but not necessarily pious or especially religious. This is a notable discrepancy from the narrative promoted by his canonization cause, which presents him as extraordinarily devoted from earliest childhood.

Then there's the money question.

The Acutis family is wealthy. Canonization causes are expensive—they require hiring researchers, theologians, and advocates; flying witnesses to Rome for testimony; maintaining publicity campaigns; and navigating Vatican bureaucracy. Questions have been raised about whether the family's financial resources helped accelerate Carlo's cause in ways that might not be possible for candidates from less privileged backgrounds.

Father Nicola Gori, who served as Carlo's postulator (the person responsible for advancing a canonization cause), has stated directly that money did not influence the process. The Church maintains that every cause is evaluated on its merits, not on the resources of its promoters.

But the perception lingers, especially given how quickly Carlo's cause progressed compared to many others. The formal process began in 2012 and he was canonized in 2025—thirteen years from opening to completion. By contrast, the cause for Archbishop Óscar Romero, who was assassinated while saying Mass in El Salvador in 1980 and is widely venerated as a martyr, took thirty-five years.

The Household Conversions

One of the more striking stories in Carlo's hagiography involves Rajesh Mohur, a Hindu immigrant from Mauritius employed by the Acutis family to work in their household. According to the testimony, Mohur and Carlo became friends. Over time, after conversations with Carlo about Christianity, Mohur asked to be baptized.

A friend of Mohur's, Seeven Kistnen, also converted after meeting Carlo and hearing him speak about the faith. When Mohur's mother visited from Mauritius, she attended Mass with her son and Carlo, who spoke with her at length afterward. She too asked to be baptized.

Three conversions, all connected to a teenage boy's conversations about faith.

This narrative raises interesting questions about power dynamics that the hagiography doesn't address. Rajesh Mohur was an employee in the Acutis household. The family that paid his salary was Catholic. The son of his employers was enthusiastically sharing his faith. How freely can someone convert under those circumstances? Was Mohur drawn to Catholicism by Carlo's spiritual witness, or by the social dynamics of his employment situation?

The Church has credited these conversions to Carlo's influence without publicly examining these complications. Perhaps they don't matter—perhaps Mohur's faith became genuine regardless of how it started. But the absence of any critical examination is notable.

Why It Matters

Step back from the specific controversies and consider what Carlo Acutis represents for the Catholic Church.

The Church has a youth problem. In Europe and the Americas, young people are leaving organized religion at unprecedented rates. Those who remain often feel disconnected from a tradition that venerates medieval figures with incomprehensible names and unrelatable lives. How is a teenager in 2025 supposed to identify with someone who lived in a cave in the Egyptian desert in the fourth century?

Carlo Acutis offers something different. He wore sneakers and jeans. He played video games. He used computers. The images used to promote his cause deliberately emphasize his ordinariness—he's often shown in a red polo shirt, looking like any teenager you might pass on the street.

The message is clear: sanctity is achievable in modern life, with modern technology, in modern clothes. You don't have to retreat to a monastery. You don't have to reject the contemporary world. You can use the internet for God.

This is a powerful message for a Church trying to remain relevant to younger generations. It's also, critics would note, a suspiciously convenient one. At a moment when the Church desperately needs young role models, it has produced a young role model whose life can be shaped to fit almost any narrative.

The Exhibitions

Whatever you make of his canonization, Carlo Acutis has achieved something remarkable in death: his exhibitions on Eucharistic miracles have traveled to more than 10,000 locations across five continents.

The photo exhibition, organized with help from bishops Raffaello Martinelli and Cardinal Angelo Comastri, documents all the sites where Eucharistic miracles have allegedly occurred. The materials have been translated into eighteen languages. They've been displayed in churches, congressional halls, youth clubs, and welcome centers. The exhibition was even brought to Fátima, Portugal, for the canonization of Francisco and Jacinta Marto—the two child visionaries of the famous 1917 Marian apparitions.

Carlo himself wasn't able to attend the debut of his exhibition in Rome. He was in the hospital, dying. The unveiling happened on October 4, 2006, just eight days before his death.

The work outlived him, as its creator perhaps hoped it would.

A Question of Standards

Carlo Acutis's canonization raises a fundamental question that the Church will have to grapple with going forward: what should the standard for sainthood be?

The traditional answer has been: heroic virtue, confirmed miracles, and usually some form of extraordinary action or suffering. The saints were people who did more, sacrificed more, and endured more than ordinary believers could reasonably be expected to do.

But Carlo's life, while devout, was not marked by particular sacrifice or suffering. He was born rich and remained rich. He attended good schools. He had loving parents. His hobbies—computers and video games—were ordinary teenage hobbies. His charitable work—making websites, being kind to household staff, serving as a catechist—was admirable but not exceptional.

What made him extraordinary, in the Church's view, was primarily his interior spiritual life: his frequent prayer, his devotion to the Eucharist, his willingness to offer suffering for others when illness finally came. These are invisible virtues, known primarily through the testimony of family members who loved him.

Is this enough? Should it be enough?

The answer you give probably depends on what you think saints are for. If they're supposed to be intercessors—people in heaven who can pray for us with special effectiveness—then the miracles attributed to Carlo suggest he qualifies. If they're supposed to be models of an achievable holiness, then his ordinariness might actually be the point. If they're supposed to be proof of God's dramatic intervention in the world, then perhaps a kind teenager who made websites falls somewhat short.

The First of Many?

Carlo Acutis will not be the last millennial saint, or even the last internet-savvy saint. The Church has causes open for other young people who died in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The model of the "ordinary" young saint—relatable, contemporary, social-media-compatible—may become increasingly common as the Church seeks ways to connect with generations raised on screens.

Whether this represents a healthy evolution of the tradition or a dilution of its standards is a question that believers will debate for years to come.

What's not debatable is that on September 7, 2025, a teenager who played video games and built websites joined the company of Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Ávila, and Thomas More. The Church that spent centuries venerating those who fled the world has now canonized someone who used its newest technologies.

Carlo Acutis wanted to be a priest when he grew up. He never got the chance. But in death, he may have a larger influence on the Church's future than most priests ever do.