Leo XIV canonizes the first millennial saint: Carlo Acutis, 'God's influencer'

Carlo Acutis is now officially the first millennial saint. Leo XIV finally raised to the altars the Italian teenager known as God's influencer and whose canonization was postponed from its initial date by the death of Pope Francis. Along with Acutis was also proclaimed a saint Pier Giorgio Frassati.

Thousands of people, including Antonia Salzano, mother of the new saint, gathered Sunday at the Vatican to celebrate the canonization of the first saint of the millennial generation, who died at only 15 years old in 2006. During the celebration, the pope noted that the "cyberapostle" dedicated much of his short life to spreading the Catholic faith on the Internet.

At the ceremony, the pontiff also canonized another Italian who died very young, the student Pier Giorgio Frassati (1901-1925), a passionate mountaineer known for his social and spiritual commitment.

"An invitation not to waste life"

The pope stressed that the example of both is "an invitation addressed to all of us, especially to young people, not to waste life, but to direct it upwards and turn it into a masterpiece."

Under a radiant sun and an important security device, about 80,000 people, according to the Vatican, many of them young people, gathered in the square carrying flags of their country or images with the effigy of Acutis. "I am happy to see so many young people!" said Pope Leo XIV, a few minutes before the start of the ceremony.

Acutis was very talented in computer science and created a digital exhibition on the Eucharistic miracles. Born in London in 1991 to a well-to-do, lapsed Italian family, Acutis grew up in Milan and showed much religious fervor from an early age.

He was beatified in 2020 and the Vatican credits him with two miracles that qualified him for canonization: the healing of a Brazilian child with a rare malformation of the pancreas and that of a Costa Rican student seriously injured in an accident.

A canonization at full speed

Canonization, which follows beatification, is the result of a long and meticulous process and can only be approved by the pope. It requires three conditions: having died at least five years earlier, an exemplary Christian existence and having performed at least two miracles, one of them after the beatification, AFP reports.

This decision is the subject of a "process," an investigation instructed at the Vatican by the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, in which specialists such as doctors and theologians are charged with assessing whether there were miracles, which are usually healings without a scientific explanation. The process of canonization of the young Carlo Acutis was very fast, something unusual.

Frassati, canonized 30 years after being beatified

On the other hand, Pier Giorgio Frassati, also canonized this Sunday, died 100 years ago. Frassati was born in Turin into a bourgeois family and broke with the path of his father, a senator and founder of the newspaper La Stampa, to serve the poor and sick of his city.

He died at the age of 24 from polio, and was erected by the Catholic Church as a model of charity. More than 30 years after his beatification by John Paul II in 1990, the Vatican recognized a second miracle at the end of 2024: the inexplicable healing of a young American in a coma.

This canonization ceremony, the first for Pope Leo XIV since his election in May, took place in the midst of the Jubilee, the Catholic Church's "Holy Year," for which more than 24 million people have already flocked to Rome, according to the Vatican.