The Vatican has declared 15-year-old Carlo Acutis a saint, a boy who played Halo and PlayStation in the 2000s, created websites, and helped the homeless at the same time.
For the Catholic Church, he is the first canonized saint to live in the digital age. The Vatican held the canonization ceremony in St. Peter’s Square in front of 80,000 people. The 15-year-old boy was buried back in 2006 in Assisi, Italy, because he died of acute leukemia. Thousands of people attended the funeral even then, and now his burial place has become a place of pilgrimage.
The teenager loved video games, but he set himself a rule of — an hour a week at most. He played Halo, Super Mario, and Pokémon, but spent the rest of his time volunteering. From the age of nine, he helped the homeless in Milan, gave away clothes, and refused to give up his pocket money to spend it on charity.
After his death, his path to canonization was record-breaking fast. The Vatican began the process in 2012, and in 2018 he was named “venerable,” in 2020 “blessed,” and now a full-fledged saint. This required two miracles. The first was the healing of a Brazilian boy with a pancreatic defect. The second was the recovery of a girl from Costa Rica from a serious head injury when her mother prayed at Carlo’s tomb. After praying to Carlo, their conditions suddenly improved, and doctors could not find an explanation for this recovery. So these two cases were key to Carlo’s official recognition as a saint.
Carlo’s body is now on display in Assisi, Italy. He is dressed in jeans, Nike sneakers, and a sweater — he looks like an ordinary teenager. To popularize his figure, they even made a video game Acutis — a Catholic metaverse where the hero travels through the history of the Church, meets saints, and goes skiing as a young Pope John Paul II.
Acutis trailer
Carlo was born in London in 1991 and grew up in Milan. He was fascinated by computer science and as a teenager made a website where he collected all the Eucharistic miracles recognized by the Church. It was 2002, and for that time such a resource was a really serious work. That’s why he was nicknamed “God’s Influencer.”
Pope Francis actively promoted the cause of canonization during his lifetime, but his successor Leo XIV said the final word. Now, the Vatican will celebrate St. Carlo’s Day every year, and schools and parishes will be able to bear his name.
As a reminder, last year the Vatican accidentally found the gardens of the Roman Emperor Caligula, 2000 years old. And the previous Pope commissioned the construction of a solar power plant that will provide the Vatican with 100% electricity.
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