Blessed Carlo Acutis (see January-February 2021 edition of Michael), an Italian youth who died in 2006 at the age of 15 was beatified in 2020 and will be canonized during the Holy Year of 2025.
This joyous news was announced on July 1, 2024, at the consistory where the date for the canonization of Blessed Marie-Léonie Paradis was made (see page 27).
by Vianney Groussin, Vatican City
An unbuttoned red polo shirt and a backpack slung over his shoulders…In the few photos of Carlo Acutis, the same frank gaze stares back at you with a natural smile, giving the impression of a teenager at ease with himself. Beyond this classic pose, Carlo Acutis revealed himself to be a great saint, a model for the 21st century, reminding us that holiness begins now. Many young people have already "adopted" him, and say they are inspired by his life, which was punctuated by daily Mass and computer coding.
Carlo Acutis created a website listing Eucharistic miracles around the world. For Father Will Conquer, author of the book, Un geek au paradis, "Carlo is a pioneer, who discovered a new continent called the sixth continent, or the Internet, and became its evangelizer, the one who planted the cross on this terra incognita." Through his work and his approach to new technologies, "he can show us that in the midst of this minefield, we can emerge unscathed if we go there to be missionaries and to bear witness to the Gospel. But if we go there to be consumers, slaves to the game society, then we're going to fall."
For him, Carlo Acutis' holiness lies in "purity of heart in a world led astray by the excesses of the Internet. The solution to maintaining purity of heart is not to isolate oneself in a jar, but to live on earth as a mission. And he lived his whole life as a missionary."
Being a modern day saint, using these tools that can probably do as much good as harm, is all the more difficult, notes Father Conquer: "He's a child of TV, it's the 90s, so he's a child of PlayStation and all that stuff... You have to realize how exceptional that is!" The priest from the diocese of Monaco added that Carlo died suddenly at the age of 15, but "how many young people today would be ready to die and go to heaven? His youth makes his life even more incredible, since he didn't wait for glory or success in his work, but drew on the simplicity of childhood: "What's very surprising is this paradox in Carlo: it's this banality that is canonized, and at the same time, within this banality, the exigency. Because, in fact, it's a banality that reaches us in our daily lives, but a requirement that goes beyond us and forces us to turn to God's grace to say to ourselves 'but I, in fact, realize that I have everything to be a saint, but I'm not there'."
"Every time we talk about his life, young people stop and listen. Carlo speaks to them because when we show them photos, well, yes, he's young, he wears sweatshirts, he's just like them," says Lisa Schmitt, a school life assistant and catechist in Monaco. It has to be said that the 42-year-old mother's testimony is deeply moving. After discovering the figure of the Italian youth with Father Will Conquer, she began praying to him during confinement, at a time when she was losing hope in life and feeling very alone with her two daughters, one of whom was worrying doctors because of a cyst in her neck. She soon found comfort in prayer, and the doctors suddenly found nothing to worry about with her daughter, who had been recommended for surgery for years.
Since that day, her second daughter Manon has become very attached to Carlo Acutis, whom she went to see (at his request) with her mother and sister in Assisi for his beatification, "a moment of grace" for the mother of the family, who still speaks of it with tears of emotion. Since then, Lisa Schmitt has quit her job as a physiotherapist and is training to become a catechist, and the family's devotion to Carlo continues unabated: "Not an evening goes by now without my daughter praying to him in the evening, [...] the last sentence we say before she goes to sleep is 'merci Carlo, merci Carlo, merci Carlo'; we thank the Virgin, we thank God, but we say merci Carlo. It's been going on for five years, and wherever we go, we've got the cuddly toy, we've got the Rosary and we've got Carlo! [...] She has a Carlo book and a Carlo icon in her bed. And at Sainte-Dévote Church in Monaco, where we were lucky enough to receive relics, we pray to him regularly, to express our thoughts and thank him."
The strength of Carlo Acutis, she explains, lies in the fact that today he is the only saint to have lived in the same period as us, and thus proves that it is still possible to live a holy life in this time: "He is the forerunner of a new way of practicing the faith for young people, which is going to be quite exceptional and right up to date."
Source: www.vaticannews.va/fr/podcast/les-dossiers-de-la-redaction/2024/07/carlo-acutis-la-saintete-au-quotidien.html