A London teenager who died of leukaemia could become the Catholic Church’s first ever millennial saint of Pope Francis after he was credited with a series of miracles after his death, Sky News reports.
Carlo Acutis, who died of leukaemia in 2006 at the age of 15, was beatified in 2020 after he was found to have cured Brazilian boy Mattheus Vianna of a serious birth defect that left him unable to eat.
According to the priest and family friends, the miracle, which dates back to February 2014, occurred after the boy “fully recovered” after touching Carlo’s relics. The second miracle was the healing of a girl from Costa Rica. According to Avvenire, the daily newspaper of the Italian Bishops’ Conference (CEI), the boy healed her after her mother approached him.
Pope Francis decided to attribute the second miracle to Carlo during a meeting with the head of the Vatican’s department for saints, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro.
Love of religion in a boy’s life
Carlo’s friends unofficially called him as “God’s influencer” as he used his computer skills to spread the Catholic faith. Carlo was born in London but grew up in Milan, where he ran his parish’s website and later an academy based in the Vatican.
From an early age Carlo had a special love for God, although his parents were not particularly devout. Antonia Salzano, his mother, said that before Carlo, she only went to Mass for her first communion, confirmation and wedding. But as a child, Carlo loved to pray the rosary. After his first communion, he went to Mass as often as possible at the parish across the street from his primary schools.
Carlo’s love of the Eucharist also inspired a profound conversion in his mother. His mother said that he “managed to drag his relatives, his parents, to Mass every day. Not the other way round, it was not the parents who brought the little boy to Mass, but it was he himself who was able to make himself go to Mass and persuade others to receive Communion daily.”
In October 2023, Salzano spoke on the EWTN News Nightly programme about her son’s devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. She said:
“He used to say, “There are queues in front of a concert, in front of a football match, but I don’t see these queues in front of the Blessed Sacrament” … So, for him the Eucharist was the center of his life.”
Can miracles be possible
The attribution of the second miracle means the church can now rank the boy as a saint, but the Vatican has not said when this will happen.
The Roman Catholic Church teaches that only God performs miracles, but saints intercede for people who pray to them. Miracles are usually medically inexplicable healings of people.
