“GOD’S INFLUENCER” – Vatican Set To Consecrate First Millennial Saint Who Healed What Was Impossible

“GOD’S INFLUENCER” – Vatican Set To Consecrate First Millennial Saint Who Healed What Was Impossible

A London-born Italian teenager who spent his short life preaching his faith online and earning the nickname “God’s Influencer” will be the Catholic Church’s first millennial saint.

Carlo Acutis, who died of leukemia at the age of 15 in 2006, was beatified four years ago when the Vatican determined that he had miraculously saved the life of another kid.

On Thursday, Pope Francis completed his path to sainthood by authorizing another miraculous act: an intercession on behalf of a young woman in Florence who suffered severe brain damage in July 2022.

Antonia Salzano, Carlo’s mother, praised the decision as a “great joy,” telling Vatican Radio that “many had prayed for this canonization.”

“I was not an example of sanctity, but for me, Carlo was like a teacher, he was special, never a complaint, never a criticism,” she said.

Beato Carlos Acutis rogai pela juventude! Amém pic.twitter.com/4JIySpOKCF

— 🇻🇦Claudia (@reginademaria10) May 23, 2024

Carlo was born in London on May 3, 1991, to Italian parents who moved him to Milan as a child, where he developed an interest in computers.

“Carlo used the web as a tool for evangelization,” Salzano told Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper in an interview published Friday.

Carlo, also known as the “blessed of the internet” or “the Cyberapostle”, warned his contemporaries that the internet might be both a curse and a boon.

His mother stated that he also assisted in his neighborhood by donating blankets and food to homeless people in Milan.

She said she always knew he would become a saint: “He told me himself, appearing to me in a dream.”

Supporters had previously urged that Carlo become the internet’s patron saint, but the seventh-century scholar Isidore de Seville is usually regarded as already having that function.

Carlo died on October 12, 2006, in Monza, Northern Italy. In 2020, the Vatican recognized his first miracle, alleging that the youngster interceded in 2013 to cure a Brazilian kid suffering from a rare pancreatic ailment.

He was beatified — or “Blessed” — in Assisi, Italy, the birthplace of the pope’s namesake Saint Francis, where Carlo made multiple pilgrimages.

Carlo’s remains were moved to the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Assisi and displayed in a tomb with a glass side.

He appeared remarkably lifelike, with a recreated face and a body dressed in trousers, trainers, and a sweater.

Many Catholics make pilgrimages to his tomb, which is also the scene of the Vatican’s second miracle.

According to the Vatican’s news agency, Valeria, a teenage student in Florence, sustained severe brain injuries after falling off her bicycle in July 2022.

Doctors gave her an extremely slim chance of survival.

Her Costa Rican mother, Liliana, went to Carlo’s tomb to plead for his help, and on the same day, her baby began to breathe on her own.

According to Vatican News, the young woman healed after a few weeks.

In a statement issued Thursday, the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of Saints said Francis and authorized a decree commemorating “the miracle attributed to the intercession of Blessed Carlo Acutis”.

He will convene a cardinals’ meeting to determine the date of canonization.

“GOD’S INFLUENCER” – Vatican Set To Consecrate First Millennial Saint Who Healed What Was Impossible