Carlo Acutis wore sneakers and jeans, relaxed with his PlayStation, craved Nutella, and loved soccer. On Sunday, the Italian teenager will become the Catholic Church’s first saint from the internet generation.
Carlo, a self-taught computer whiz whose devotion to his faith was unusual for his age, died of leukemia in 2006 at just 15.
To friends and classmates, he was a well-liked fan of the AC Milan soccer team who would sometimes vanish for hours at a time to write computer code.
To fellow parishioners of Milan’s Santa Maria Segreta — St. Mary the Hidden — he was a boy who never missed a daily Mass, prayed the rosary, and who spoke about heaven as if he had firsthand knowledge.
“In most ways, Carlo was a regular child who didn’t stand out,” his mother, Antonia Salzano, told The Washington Times from Milan. “He liked school and had many friends. But he was also very dedicated to helping people find their faith. That was what made him so special.”
At his request, Carlo was buried in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Assisi, the Italian city best known as the birthplace of St. Francis, the 13th-century founder of the Franciscan order and a saint whom Carlo admired (as well as the namesake of the previous pope, who got the ball rolling on the boy’s canonization).
After Carlo’s death, his story spread. A website he designed to catalog Eucharistic miracles and multiple languages began to draw worldwide attention.
