Catholic Church to make boy who died at age of 15 its first millennial saint

Carlo Acutis taught himself to code while still at primary school, before using his skills to create websites for Catholic organisations, as well as one that documented miracles around the world.

A boy who died of leukaemia aged 15 is to become the Catholic Church’s first millennial saint.

Carlo Acutis was a computer prodigy who helped to spread Roman Catholic teaching online before his death in 2006. Pope Francis decreed that a second posthumous miracle has been attributed to Acutis, qualifying the teenager for canonisation.

Acutis was born in London in 1991 before moving to Milan with his Italian parents as a child. Out of 912 people canonised by Pope Francis, the most recent birth date was previously 1926.

His parents have said that from the age of three, their son would ask to visit churches they passed in Milan and would donate his pocket money to poor people in the city.

He would also offer to support classmates whose parents were going through divorces, would defend disabled peers when they were bullied, and would take meals and sleeping bags to rough sleepers in Milan.

He taught himself to code while still at primary school, before using his skills to create websites for Catholic organisations, as well as one that documented miracles around the world.

In Catholicism, people can pray to deceased people who they believe to be in heaven to request they speak to God on their behalf, such as asking for a person to recover from an illness or injury.

If the person in question then appears to undergo an unexpected recovery it can be classed as a miracle by the Vatican. If two miracles are attributed to a deceased person and approved by the pope, then they qualify for sainthood.

Acutis was put on the path towards sainthood after Pope Francis approved a miracle attributed to him: a seven-year-old boy from Brazil recovered from a rare pancreatic disorder after coming into contact with one of Acutis’s T-shirts. A priest had also prayed to Acutis on behalf of the child.

The Catholic Church’s dedicated unit for looking into the validity of miracles have now investigated claims that a Costa Rican woman enjoyed a miraculous recovery after a bicycle accident in Florence in 2022.

Her mother went to pray for her daughter’s recovery at the tomb of Acutis in the Umbrian town of Assisi six days later.

The Church said that on the same day, she began to breathe without a ventilator and recovered the use of her upper limbs and her speech. She was discharged from intensive care 10 days later.

- Guardian