Thousands gathered on Sunday at the Vatican to celebrate the canonization of the first saint from the millennial generation, Italian Carlo Acutis, a teenager known as the “influencer of God,” who died at just 15 years old.
During the solemn mass, which began at 10:00 a.m. (08:00 GMT) in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Leo XIV officially declared Acutis a saint. Acutis, who died in 2006, was nicknamed the “cyber-apostle” for dedicating much of his short life to spreading the Catholic faith online.
In the same ceremony, the pontiff also canonized another young Italian, student Pier Giorgio Frassati (1901–1925), a passionate mountaineer remembered for his deep social and spiritual commitment.
According to the Peruvian-American pope, the example of both is “an invitation to all of us, especially the young, not to waste life but to direct it upward and turn it into a masterpiece.”
Under a radiant sun and tight security, about 80,000 people—many of them young—filled the square, carrying flags of their countries or images of Acutis. “I am glad to see so many young people!” Pope Leo XIV said just before the start of the ceremony.
Acutis, who died of leukemia in 2006, was scheduled to be canonized on April 27, but the event was postponed due to the death of Pope Francis.
Gifted with computer skills, Acutis created a digital exhibition on Eucharistic miracles.
“Carlo Acutis was an example for me, because he knew how to combine everyday life—school, soccer, and his passion for computers—with an unshakable faith,” said Filippo Bellaviti, 17, from Vignate near Milan.
Born in London in 1991 to a wealthy but non-practicing Italian family, Acutis grew up in Milan and showed fervent religious devotion from a very young age.
He was beatified in 2020, and the Vatican attributed two miracles to him that qualified him for sainthood: the healing of a Brazilian child with a rare pancreatic malformation and the recovery of a Costa Rican student seriously injured in an accident.
In Assisi, where Acutis’s tomb attracts hundreds of thousands of pilgrims and visitors each year, the diocese installed giant screens to broadcast the canonization.
“I know that many will come, many will see it on television (…). And I am sure that Carlo is grateful,” said his mother, Antonia Salzano, in a video released Saturday by the diocese of Assisi.
With nearly one million visitors in 2024, the Assisi diocese continues to see rising attendance at the Sanctuary of the Stripping, where the teenager’s body rests—dressed in jeans, Nike sneakers, and a tracksuit.
A “Very Fast” Process
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, living an exemplary Christian life, and performing at least two miracles, one of them after beatification.
The decision is the outcome of a “process,” an investigation conducted by the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints at the Vatican, in which specialists such as doctors and theologians evaluate alleged miracles, usually unexplained healings.
The canonization of Carlo Acutis moved unusually quickly. By contrast, Pier Giorgio Frassati, also canonized on Sunday, had died a century earlier.
Frassati was born in Turin into a bourgeois family but broke away from his father—a senator and founder of the newspaper La Stampa—to devote himself to serving the poor and sick in his city.
He died at 24 from polio and was held up 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 in late 2024: the unexplained recovery of a young American who had been in a coma.
This canonization ceremony, the first presided over by Pope Leo XIV since his election in May, took place during the Jubilee, the Catholic Church’s “Holy Year,” which has already brought more than 24 million pilgrims to Rome, according to the Vatican
