An Internet-savvy teenager will be canonized

Is he in the sky or in the “cloud”? Sometimes called “cyber-apostle”, Carlo Acutis, an internet-savvy and very pious teenager whose death from illness in 2006 moved Italy, will be sanctified.

A gifted computer scientist, and above all possessed of an early and intense faith, the young man born into a not very religious family had created religious digital sites as well as an exhibition documenting the Eucharistic miracles, associated with consecrated hosts, which went around of the world.

The Vatican announced Thursday that Pope Francis authorized the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, the Vatican department responsible for matters of beatification and canonization, to “promulgate the miracle attributed to the intercession of Blessed Carlo Acutis.”

His mother, Antonia Salzano, welcomed the news with “great joy.” “The Lord granted the desire of so many people who prayed for his canonization,” she told Vatican Radio on Friday.

Born in London on May 3, 1991 to Italian parents, the teenager with a baby face and curly jet-black hair died of leukemia at the age of 15 on October 12, 2006 in Monza, near Milan, in the Northern Italy.

His coffin was transferred in 2019 to the Church of Saint Mary Major in Assisi, city of Saint Francis whose name was adopted by Argentine Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio when he became pope in 2013.

His remains have been permanently visible since 2022. The exceptional state of preservation of the body amazes the faithful who come to visit him: in jeans, tennis shoes and a jogging jacket, hands crossed on his stomach, he seems to be sleeping.

Antonia Salzano confided in interviews that Carlo, who went to mass and took communion every day, imposed maximum times on himself for using the Internet, because he did not want to become a “slave” to it. “What is incredible is that with a relatively obsolete computer, he managed to reach thousands of people on all continents through an exhibition on miracles,” she said.

“All men are born as originals, but many die like photocopies, do not let this happen to you!” young Carlo recommended to his generation. This quote was included by Pope Francis in 2019 in a long text addressed to young people, warning them against an internet guided by “gigantic economic interests” and spreading “fake news”.

The pope himself punctuated his text intended for young people with expressions taken from new technologies, saying for example that the memory of God “is not a hard drive” and that Jesus “is online”.

Carlo Acutis was declared “venerable” in the summer of 2018 and a first miracle, recognized in 2020 by the Vatican, opened the way to his beatification, the last step before becoming a saint.

The first miracle dates back to 2013 when a Brazilian child suffering from digestive disorders and a rare pancreatic malformation was saved without medical operation after his family prayed for Carlo’s intercession, according to the Church.

The second miracle, which opens the way to canonization, is the story of Valeria, a 21-year-old Costa Rican student seriously injured in a bicycle fall in Florence on July 2, 2022. Her condition was then desperate, says the Vatican. Her mother Liliana began to pray to Blessed Carlo Acutis and went to his tomb in Assisi on July 8, leaving a letter to ask for her daughter’s healing. The miracle happens: the same day, Valeria breathes independently and recovers within a few weeks. At the beginning of September of that year, she went with her mother to Assisi to visit the tomb of Carlo Acutis.

A consistory, the assembly of cardinals, must now set the date of the canonization.