Blessed Carlo Acutis: The New Patron Saint of Millennials, Generation Z?

Young people find a new role model: The one thing we need to do to become holy…

Saints stare at computer screens, too. Blessed Carlo Acutis (1991–2006) loved Super Mario, Playstation, and Pokémon but he loved Jesus more.

“He had his gaze turned to Jesus,’’ Cardinal Agostino Vallini said at Carlo’s beatification on October 10. “Love for the Eucharist was the foundation that kept alive his relationship with God. He often said, ‘The Eucharist is my highway to Heaven.’ He was an ordinary boy, simple, spontaneous, likable.’’

The first Millennial to be beatified by the Catholic Church died of leukemia at age 15. His feast day is now marked every October 12. He was just a simple, sweet boy from a fairly ordinary family. But his sincere love for others changed hearts, inspiring prayers, and miracles:

• Like many Millennials, he saw peers battered by divorce, inviting young friends whose parents were divorcing to spend time at his home. He also fought for disabled children mocked by bullies.
• A “computer geek,’’ his passion for the Eucharist inspired him to build a website cataloging Eucharistic Miracles. It’s since been translated into multiple languages. Its content is downloadable for public displays.
• His mother, like many Catholics, missed regular Mass for years. But once her son received his first communion at age 7, he never wanted to miss daily Mass again, convinced the Eucharist was everything. That inspired others. His mom calls him “my little savior.’’
• He made holy hours, praying before the Blessed Sacrament for an hour at a time, either before or after Mass.
• He went to confession weekly and regularly prayed the Rosary.
• Pew Research in 2019 found just a third of U.S. Catholics fully believe the core teaching that the Eucharist is the Real Presence of Jesus Christ. Carlo was certain the Eucharist is the Body and Blood of Christ. He vowed to become more like Jesus by spending more time with Him, participating in the sacraments as frequently as possible.

“Carlo was a seed, or rather, he planted a seed with this exposition on Eucharistic miracles,’’ his mother believes.

By age 11, he became an assistant catechist in his parish (he soon was able to teach the Catechism himself).

When told he had leukemia and could die at age 15, he smiled and said, “the Lord gave me a beautiful alarm clock.’’ He fully accepted his fate, saying. “I offer all the suffering I will have to suffer for the Lord, for the Pope, and the Church.’’

We embrace “influencers’’ — Carlo is an “Influencer for God…’’

He died on October 12, 2006. Exactly nine days later, a Eucharistic Miracle occurred: a sister distributing communion in Mass found her eyes were filled with tears as the communion host began to ooze a red substance.

Two scientific studies conducted over two years found the host had the properties of an interior wound of living human heart tissue.

The different “certified,’’ fully investigated and approved miracle that made him “Blessed Carlo’’ in 2020 occurred in 2013, seven years after his death.

In Brazil, a boy named Mattheus overcame a congenital disability after Mattheus’ parish priest, Father Nicola Gori, had been praying for Carlo’s beatification. The priest held a healing service where they prayed for Carlo’s intercession on the anniversary of his death. Gori explained the miracle to Italian media:

“On October 12, 2013, seven years after Carlo’s death, a child, affected by a congenital malformation (annular pancreas), when it was his turn to touch the picture of the future blessed, expressed a singular wish, like a prayer: ‘I wish I could stop vomiting so much.’ Healing began immediately, to the point that the physiology of the organ in question changed.’’

Fourteen years after Blessed Carlo’s death, his body is on public display in Italy, incorrupt as is the case with many saints.

Blessed Carlo is showing young people how to be holy…

Around the world, Millennials (born from 1981–96) and Generation Z (born from 1996–2015) see a holy child/teenager they can easily identify with, imitate, and learn from.

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Carlo fully believed Church teachings that the most ordinary people are extraordinary, each created by God for a unique purpose:

“All people are born as originals but many die as photocopies,” Blessed Carlo said.

How to be a saint: You are what you eat, “always be close to Jesus…’’

“To always be close to Jesus, that’s my plan,’’ Blessed Carlo said. Catholics believe they are consuming the Body and Blood of Christ during Communion, so he did so every day he could.

Eucharistic Adoration, gazing upon Jesus and praying before the Blessed Sacrament, was also essential for him: “If we get in front of the sun, we get suntans, but when we get in front of Jesus in the Eucharist we become saints.’’

“The more Eucharist we receive, the more we will become like Jesus, so that on this earth we will have a foretaste of Heaven,’’ Blessed Carlo said. “Sadness is looking at ourselves, happiness is looking towards God… The Eucharist is the highway to Heaven.’’

To become a saint, he stressed, only requires one thing: “The only thing we have to ask God for, in prayer, is the desire to be holy.”

“Our goal must be infinite, not the finite,’’ he stressed. “The infinite is our homeland. Heaven has been waiting for us forever.”