By Catherine Pepinster
On Sunday 7 September, Pope Leo XIV will canonise Carlo Acutis at a ceremony at St Peter’s Basilica. The British-born teenager, who died aged 15, has been called the first millennial saint and God’s Influencer.
Thousands have been made saints by the Roman Catholic Church. Why is this canonisation special?
It will be the first canonisation conducted by Pope Leo XIV since he was elected in May. It was to have been carried out by Pope Francis but was cancelled when his health failed and then he died. It’s also unusual because Carlo Acutis has been called the first millennial saint; he died in 2006 from leukaemia.
That’s young for a saint
It certainly is. But there is no age requirement for saints, and Carlo is not the youngest. José Luis Sánchez del Río became a martyr at the age of 14 during the anti-Catholic Revolution, known as the 1926-29 Cristero Wars, in Mexico. He joined the rebel forces to fight the oppressive regime in the country and refused to deny his faith even under torture. He was canonised in 2016.
José was a martyr. Why is Carlo Acutis being canonised?
There are always several requirements for sainthood. You must be Roman Catholic, be dead, and must have lived a demonstrably holy life and to have been responsible for two miracles.
The miracles?
A saint is someone that Catholics ask to intercede on someone’s behalf — to pray to God for that person, mediating between those on earth and God: someone who is with God in paradise and might have a hotline to the Lord. In 2020, the Catholic church recognised that the curing of a child’s pancreatic disease was down to Acutis’s intercession. This led to the beatification— the stage before becoming a saint. He was then known as Blessed Carlo Acutis.
Then in 2024, Pope Francis recognised another medical miracle attributed to Acutis: a Costa Rican woman who had suffered a brain haemorrhage and doctors doubted her survival. Her mother prayed for the intercession of Acutis and her daughter recovered.
So is this why Acutis is called God’s Influencer?
No. This is linked to Acutis’s interest in computers and gaming and how he used them to benefit the church. He created websites for his parish church, for his high school promoting volunteering — he won a national competition for that design — and others cataloguing eucharistic miracles (ones involving communion hosts) and visions of the Virgin Mary.
What else?
He was a very generous-hearted young man, involved in charitable work, he worked as a youth leader in religious education in his parish, he was a regular church attender, and apparently inspired people to convert to Catholicism. Even his mother says he inspired her to be more devout.
Catholics in England and Wales are keen on Acutis. Are they claiming him as one of their own?
He was born in London in 1991 when his Italian parents, Andrea Acutis and Antonia Salzano, were working in Britain in insurance and publishing, and was baptised at the Church of Our Lady of Dolours in Fulham Road. Chelsea. The church now has a shrine to him with photographs and accounts of his life, and a relic.
The Catholic Church in England and Wales has organised various events in recent years, with talks about Acutis’s life and prayers. Some of them have included appearances by his mother.
In the Church of St Aldhelm in Malmesbury, a stained glass window of him (pictured here) — with his rucksack and mobile phone — was installed in 2022, two years after Acutis was declared blessed. It is unusual for a window of someone not yet canonised to be installed but the Diocese of Clifton gave permission for it after the parish priest, Fr Thomas Kulandaisamy, argued that Acutis particularly appealed to young people.
What happens to the window now?
When it was first installed Fr Kulandaisamy asked stained glass artist Michael Vincent to make an additional pane, saying “St Carlo Acutis” because the priest was so convinced he would be canonised. This week Vincent is due to visit the church to remove the blessed pane and install the update.
The window has already drawn many pilgrims to the church and according to Fr Thomas, his parishioners have developed a particular devotion to Acutis, and ask him to intercede for them when they are sick.
Will there be any special celebration in England and Wales?
Cardinal Vincent Nichols will celebrate a mass of thanksgiving in Our Lady of Dolours, on Saturday 13 September at 3pm.
A eucharistic festival will be held in Westminster Cathedral on Saturday 11 October with Cardinal Nichols including veneration of a relic of St Carlo Acutis.
What else indicates Acutis’s popularity?
Many books have already been published about him. Three churches in Wolverhampton now belong to the Blessed Carlo Acutis parish and will be marking his canonisation with a screening of the mass live from Rome. Chicago, too, has a parish named after him.
His tomb is in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Assisi where he can be seen behind glass, wearing jeans and trainers. Thousands have visited, and it is also livestreamed on the YouTube Channel Maria Vision Italia. Intentions can also be left online and are read out at mass in the church on the 12th day of each month.
What is it that makes people so keen on him?
So many people are talking about Carlo Acutis — from parishes in Malmesbury, Wolverhampton and Chelsea, to priests in London and Milan, to authors and those who look after his grave. It’s the combination of his youth and his contemporary interests. The church clearly believes he will appeal to young people. And his family have been keen to promote him too as a role model.
Who pushed hard for him to be recognised as a saint?
Becoming a saint is a complicated process. Someone must promote your cause — and in the case of Acutis, the Archdiocese of Milan, where he lived for most of his life and died, actively sought his beatification.
The promoter has to convince the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, a Vatican department, and then the Pope that the person should be canonised. Investigations have to take place. Witnesses are interviewed about the subject’s life; the candidate’s writings are studied, as well as material written about them, and doctors study alleged miracles to say whether medical science can explain them or not.
The person who organises all this research is called a postulator; in Acutis’s case, this is Nicola Gori, an author and journalist who writes for the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano.
Aren’t these investigations expensive?
Yes, which is why so many saints are members of religious orders: their orders are prepared to invest money in getting their man — or woman — recognised as a saint.
With Carlo Acutis, his family are wealthy and his mother has said that she had the financial means to pay for the work that has gone in to getting her child recognised.
Acutis is a saint 19 years after he died. Was he fast-tracked?
It’s pretty good going. It took two years for Francis of Assisi to be made a saint. Mother Teresa of Calcutta was a saint 19 years after her death; John Paul II nine years after his death. But it took more than 400 years for Joan of Arc to be canonised.
Are there any words of Carlo Acutis that are particularly remembered?
“The Eucharist is the highway to heaven”.
