Ñisi, Italy: for his mother, he was “a normal child”, but on Sunday, Carlo Acutis will become the first millenary holy in a solemn canonization mass held by Pope Leo XIV in the Plaza de San Pedro outside the Vatican.
Known informally as the “influencer of God” Carlo was only 15 years old when he died of acute promielocytic leukemia in Milan in 2006 and has two miracles attributed by the Catholic Church. Being made of a saint means that the Church believes that a person lives a holy life and is now in heaven with God.
But in an interview with NBC News, his mother, Antonia Salzano, 58, said that, in many ways, his son was like any other teenager who liked to play video games, go out with his friends and play football.
“He was a normal child, he was a normal person, but opened the door of his heart to God,” he said earlier this year.
Carlo was born in London, where his father, Andrea Acutis, 61, worked as a merchant banker, but the family returned to Milan when he was young. Salzano said that from an early age, Carlo “was always generous with his things.”
“If I wanted to buy, for example, two pairs of shoes, it used to say: ‘No, one is enough because there are people who die of hunger who have nothing to eat. Therefore, we do not have to waste money. Let’s help other people.'”
Carlo was put on the road to holiness after the late Pope Francis approved a miracle attributed to him in 2020, declaring him “blessed” and accrediting him with the healing of Matheus Vianna, a 7 -year -old boy from Brazil who recovered from a rare pancreatic disorder after coming into contact with one of Carlo’s shirts.
That path was even more paved last year when Carlo was attributed with a second miracle, in which the complete healing of the Costa Rican student Valeria Valverde was attributed to a main head of the head suffered in a bicycle accident, after her mother prayed in her grave.
But from an early age, said Salzano, he taught himself how to schedule computers and asked him to buy books that trained engineers could use. “I had a special ability, probably something incredible. I couldn’t understand what it would be like. But he used what he had in the heart, the love of God, to maximize the diffusion of faith,” he added.
Using the small and old family computer, Carlo taught himself how to program and built a website that cataloged more than 100 Eucharistic miracles worldwide that had been recognized by the Church for many centuries.
But although the program was her passion, said Salzano, she thought she would probably have become a priest, since he had asked her about following a career in the church. After receiving his first communion at the age of 7, he attended the daily mass regularly and taught catechism in a local parish.
“I wanted to help people discover their faith, discover God, the love of God. And all his life happened for this. Even if he lived a normal life, like children of his age,” he added.
With only 15 years, in October 2006, he fell sick and in 10 days he died of acute promielocytic leukemia.
While his suffering caused him a lot of pain, Salzano said: “If we leave suffering, offering God, we can be a little Savior, like Jesus, we can help other people with our prayers.”
While missing his son, he added that he had faith and knew that “that death is to say goodbye, not the end of everything. But death, as Carlo used to say, is the beginning of true life.”
In 2018, Carlo was named “venerable” after the Church recognized his virtuous life, and his body was taken to a sanctuary in the Sanctuary of the Spolyzione in the small city of Assisi in the center of Italy.
He asked that this be his final resting place due to his devotion to the medieval saint, San Francisco, whose hometown was Assisi. With a track lid, jeans and sneakers, listen there with a wax mold of its similarity placed on your body.
Today is a popular devotional site, which attracts thousands of faithful every day, the Monsignor Anthony Figueiredo He said in an interview earlier this year.
“This is a saint in front of our eyes, and he is a different type of saint, it can be seen with jeans and sneakers and a hoodie exactly as he dressed,” he said, adding that Carlo had been inspired by Apple Steve Jobs founder, who had said that at the end of each day, he wanted to know that he had “done something wonderful for another person.”
“That really summarizes Carlo,” said Figueiredo, added that the adolescent really struggled to do something differently. “One of Carlo’s sayings,” we are all born original, but many of us end up as photocopies. “We just want to be like the crowd and be like others.
By explaining Carlo’s popularity, he reported an interaction with a Mexican student who said: “I I can’t use Francis’s sack fabric. I can’t do the penance of Claire de Asís, but I have a couple of jeans, and use coaches. ”
The Sunday’s ceremony in front of the Basilica of San Pedro del Vaticano, together with the celebration of the Holito year’s jubilee for adolescents, was originally scheduled for April, but was postponed after Francis’s death, who called the Internet a “gift from God” and encouraged the Vatican to use technology.
It will be the first time that Leo, chosen in May to replace Francis, has presided over this event.
It is impossible to quantify exactly how many saints there are. During the first 1,000 years of the Church, they were proclaimed by popular demand, but some estimates have the number greater than 10,000.
Other saints who died at an early age include Therese de Lisieux, known for promoting a “small way” of charity and died at age 24 in 1897, and Aloysius Gonzaga, who died at 23 years in 1591 after taking care of the victims of an epidemic in Rome.
As for Carlo, his mother said that he thought his son was “a sign of hope” and that it was “important to remember young people who are unique.
“As Carlo did, he could become a saint in this world,” said Salzano. “You can do the same too. You can also overcome this and you can also do important things.”
