Pope Leo XIV declares teen computer whiz Carlo Acutis first millennial saint

Vatican City: Pope Leo XIV declared a 15-year-old computer whiz the Catholic Church’s first millennial saint Sunday, giving the next generation of Catholics a relatable role model who used technology to spread the faith and earn the nickname “God’s influencer.”

Leo canonized Carlo Acutis, who died in 2006, during an open-air Mass in St. Peter’s Square before an estimated 80,000 people, many of them millennials and couples with young children. During the first saint-making Mass of his pontificate, Leo also canonized another popular Italian figure who died young, Pier Giorgio Frassati.

Leo said both men created “masterpieces” out of their lives by dedicating them to God.

“The greatest risk in life is to waste it outside of God’s plan,” Leo said in his homily. The new saints “are an invitation to all of us, especially young people, not to squander our lives, but to direct them upwards and make them masterpieces.”

An ordinary life that became extraordinary

Acutis was born on May 3, 1991, in London to a wealthy but not particularly observant Catholic family. They moved back to Milan soon after he was born and he enjoyed a typical, happy childhood, albeit marked by increasingly intense religious devotion.

Acutis was particularly interested in computer science and devoured college-level books on programming even as a youngster.

He earned the nickname “God’s Influencer,” thanks to his main tech legacy: a multilingual website documenting so-called Eucharistic miracles recognised by the church, a project he completed at a time when the development of such sites was the domain of professionals.

He was known to spend hours in prayer before the Eucharist each day. The Catholic hierarchy has been trying to promote the practice of Eucharistic adoration because, according to polls, most Catholics don’t believe Christ is physically present in the Eucharistic hosts.

But Acutis limited himself to an hour of video games a week, apparently deciding long before TikTok that human relationships were far more important than virtual ones.

That discipline and restraint has proved appealing to the Catholic hierarchy, which has sounded the alarm about the dangers of today’s tech-driven society.agencies