Spirituality

Teenage 'God's influencer' has become the first millennial saint

By T.K. Randall
September 8, 2025

Image: Jesus Christ Figure in London
Credit: WbgArchives / CC BY-SA 3.0 (adapted) Carlo Acutis, a young gamer and web designer who documented many alleged miracles on his website as a way to spread Catholic teachings, sadly died of leukaemia in 2006 aged just 15.

In the years that followed, Pope Francis attributed two miracles to the teenager, enough for him to be canonized as a saint.

"The first miracle, he did the day of the funeral," the boy's mother said.

"A woman with breast cancer prayed (for) Carlo and she had to start chemotherapy and the cancer disappeared completely." Carlo's canonization had been scheduled to take place back in April, but it ended up being postponed due to the Pope's death.

More than one million people were thought to have made the pilgrimage to the town of Assisi in Italy where the young boy's body lay preserved in wax.

Despite this recognition, however, Carlo was not particularly devout during his short life.

"He used to play Super Mario video games on the old Nintendo consoles and I've always loved video games," said Diego Sarkissian - a young Catholic who had traveled to the canonization earlier this year only to find himself attending the Pope's funeral instead.

"The fact that you can think of a saint doing the same things [as you], wearing jeans, it feels so much closer than what other saints have felt like in the past."

Source: BBC News

Tags: Saint