“A star can never die. It just turns into a smile and melts back into the cosmic music, the dance of life.”
― Michael Jackson, Dancing the Dream
A couple of years ago, when a young Catholic from our parish passed away from a brain tumor, the community compared him to Carlo Acutis. The same reference came up again when another faithful young Catholic was taken from us too soon. Somehow, the name of Carlo Acutis, now to be canonized as the first millennial Catholic saint, has become shorthand for youthful holiness lived with courage, joy, and fidelity.
This Sunday, September 7, Pope Leo will canonize Carlo Acutis in Rome. For many young Catholics around the world, this recognition is not a surprise but an affirmation. His life, though brief, continues to inspire a generation navigating faith in the digital age.
A Millennial Saint
Carlo Acuti is ‘millennial.’ The terms to a generation of people born between the early 1980s and the late 1990s.” They are digital natives, raised in a 24/7 online world, fluent in a language and culture very different from those of their parents.
Born in London on May 3, 1991, and raised in Italy, Acutis grew up in an age of computers, video games, and the internet. Yet he chose to channel this digital environment toward something higher. While many of his peers used technology for distraction, Carlo once remarked, “All people are born as originals but many die as photocopies.” He was determined not to waste his life on what did not please God.
An Unlikely Beginning
Carlo’s story is striking because it begins not with deeply devout parents but with parents who were, by their own admission, almost lapsed Catholics. His mother later confessed that before Carlo, she had attended Mass perhaps only four times. Yet, God’s grace worked mysteriously.
Carlo was baptized at 15 days old, and his Polish nanny sowed in him the seeds of faith. The boy’s questions about God soon led his mother back to the Church. A priest, seeing Carlo’s early devotion, even predicted that he would do great things for God.
By the age of seven, Carlo had made his First Communion and set a pattern for life: daily Mass, Eucharistic adoration, and the rosary. “The Eucharist is the highway to heaven,” he would say, a conviction that guided everything he did.
Faith in Action
Carlo was not a saint because of visions or grand gestures but because of simple, daily choices. When classmates bullied him, he answered with gentleness: “Jesus would not be happy with me if I lost my temper.” He sold his expensive toys to buy blankets and food for the homeless in Milan. His quiet witness even touched his Hindu caretaker from Malaysia, Rajesh Mohur, who converted to Catholicism, followed by his mother.
Carlo was also fascinated by technology. Inspired by innovators like Steve Jobs, he wanted to stand out, not conform. He used his skills to build a website documenting Eucharistic miracles around the world. It became an international resource, showing how even the internet could be a tool for evangelization.
“The more Eucharist we receive, the more we will become like Jesus, so that on earth we will have a foretaste of heaven,” he once wrote. His love for the Eucharist was not abstract, it shaped his service to others and his creative work online.
A Short Life, a Lasting Witness
At age 15, Carlo was diagnosed with an aggressive leukemia. He understood quickly that his life would be short, yet he faced suffering with serenity and faith. “There are people who suffer much more than me,” he told his mother. Offering his pain for the Pope and the Church, he said, “I offer all the suffering I will have to endure to the Lord for the pope and for the Church, in order not to go through purgatory and to go straight to heaven.”
In his final days, he told those around him, “I am happy to die because I have lived my life without wasting a minute on those things which do not please God.” On October 12, 2006, he died, leaving behind not despair but a luminous testimony.
Grief and Grace
For his parents, the loss was devastating. Any parent who has lost a child knows the dull ache that never fades. His mother, Antonia, longed for more children but was unable to conceive. Three years after Carlo’s death, he appeared to her in a dream, telling her she would have twins. At age 44, she gave birth to a boy and girl, both of whom today share Carlo’s devotion to daily Mass, adoration, and the rosary.
His mother once remarked that Carlo taught her faith more than she taught him. In this, he fulfilled his mission not only for his family but also for the wider Church.
The Road to Sainthood
Two miracles attributed to Carlo’s intercession paved the way for his beatification in 2020. Pope Francis frequently pointed to Carlo as a model for young people. In Christus Vivit, his exhortation to the youth, the Pope wrote that Carlo’s life stood against the temptations of “self-absorption, isolation, and empty pleasure” in the digital age.
“His witness indicates to today’s young people that true happiness is found by putting God in first place and serving him in our brothers and sisters, especially the least,” the Pope said the day after Carlo’s beatification.
Though his canonization was delayed by Pope Francis’s death, Pope Leo will now formally declare him a saint, alongside Blessed Giorgio Frassati.
A Saint for Today
Carlo’s tomb in Assisi’s Sanctuary of the Renunciation has become a pilgrimage site. Thousands of young people visit to see the boy who showed holiness in jeans and sneakers. His body, displayed behind glass, appears peaceful, as though resting in incorruptible sleep.
For them, Carlo is proof that sanctity is not locked in the past but possible now. His life plan was simple: “To always be close to Jesus, that’s my life plan.” And his witness reminds us that “By standing before the Eucharistic Christ, we become holy.”
Home at Last
Carlo Acutis’s story is not just about a boy who loved computers and Mass. It is about a soul who discovered, in the Eucharist, the shortest road to heaven. He showed that time is short, and life is not to be wasted.
As Thomas Merton once wrote before his final journey: “May I not come back without having settled the great affair. And found also the great compassion. I am going home, to the home where I have never been in this body.”
Carlo too has gone home, joyfully, faithfully, and with a smile that still shines across the world.
(Tom Thomas, a Catholic entrepreneur and writer based in Bangalore, South India, contributes articles to Catholic magazines and media platforms, both in India and abroad.)
