Influential figure deemed divinely favored by the Pope becomes the first millennial saint
In a historic open-air Mass in St. Peter's Square, Pope Leo XIV, the first Pope from the United States, crowned two new saints of the Catholic Church. Among them was Carlo Acutis, a 15-year-old Italian teenager who passed away due to leukaemia in 2006.
Born in 1991 and raised in Milan, Carlo Acutis taught himself basic coding and used it to document miracles and other elements of the Catholic faith online. His ardent faith and kindness towards bullied children and homeless people were well-known.
The first miracle attributed to Acutis was the healing of a Brazilian child suffering from a rare pancreatic malformation. The second miracle involved the recovery of a Costa Rican student who was seriously injured in an accident. Both miracles were necessary for Acutis's canonization, which was performed by Pope Leo XIV on Sunday.
Among the crowd of over 80,000 people was Eleanor Hauser, a 15-year-old from the US state of North Carolina, on a school trip. She had been told about Acutis by her Catholic grandmother.
Pier Giorgio Frassati, an Italian mountaineering enthusiast who died of polio aged 24 in 1925, was also made a saint on Sunday. Frassati, an engineering student, made it his mission to serve the poor and sick of his city. He was held up by the Church as a model of charity.
In his homily, Pope Leo said that the saints Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis are an invitation to all, especially young people, to direct their lives upwards and make them masterpieces. Filippo Bellaviti, 17, echoed this sentiment, stating that Acutis was able to combine faith with everyday life, including school, football, and IT.
Carlo Acutis's preserved body, dressed in jeans and a pair of Nike trainers, lies in a glass-walled tomb in the Italian town of Assisi. Almost a million pilgrims visited his tomb last year, according to the diocese.
The Vatican estimated the crowd at about 80,000 people for Sunday's canonisation, which was initially set for April but postponed following the death of Pope Francis. Acutis was beatified by John Paul II in 1990, and the Vatican recognized the necessary second miracle for his sainthood in 2024.
Tapestries showing images of both young men were displayed on the facade of St. Peter's Basilica. This historic event marks a significant moment in the Catholic Church, with the canonization of its first millennial saint, Carlo Acutis.
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