Pope Leo XIV will canonize Carlo Acutis, the 'influencer of God'

Pope Leo XIV will canonize on Sunday the first millennial saint , the Italian Carlo Acutis , the "influencer of God" who dedicated much of his short life to spreading the Catholic faith on the internet.

During the celebration, starting at 10:00 a.m. (local time) in St. Peter 's Square, the head of the Catholic Church will also canonize another Italian who died very young, the student Pier Giorgio Frassati (1901-1925), a passionate mountaineer , known for his social and spiritual commitment.

The canonization of Acutis , who died of leukemia in 2006 at the age of 15, was to have taken place on April 27, but had to be postponed due to the death of Pope Francis .

Acutis was very talented in computer science and created a digital exhibition on Eucharistic miracles, which earned him the nickname "God's influencer" or "cyber apostle."

Born in London in 1991 to a wealthy, non-practicing Italian family, Acutis grew up in Milan and showed great religious fervor from a very early age.

He was beatified in 2020, and the Vatican attributes to him two miracles that qualify him for canonization: the healing of a Brazilian boy with a rare malformation of the pancreas and the healing of a Costa Rican student seriously injured in an accident.

In both cases, their families had called on the teenager to intercede.

In Assisi , where the tomb of Carlo Acutis attracts hundreds of thousands of pilgrims and curious people each year, the diocese has set up giant screens to follow the ceremony and has chartered a special train to transport more than 800 people to Rome .

Canonization , which follows beatification , is the result of a long and meticulous process and is approved only by the pope.

It requires three conditions: having died at least five years ago, having led an exemplary Christian life, and having performed at least two miracles, one of them after beatification.

This decision is the subject of a "process," an investigation conducted by the Vatican's Dicastery for the Causes of Saints , in which specialists such as doctors and theologians are tasked with evaluating whether miracles occurred, which in general are healings without a scientific explanation.

The canonization process of the young Carlo Acutis was extremely rapid, something unusual.

Pier Giorgio Frassati , on the other hand, who will be canonized alongside him on Sunday, died 100 years ago. He was born in Turin to a bourgeois family and broke with the path of his father, a senator and founder of the newspaper La Stampa , to serve the poor and sick of his city.

This engineering student, athlete, mountain enthusiast and member of Catholic Action , summed up his ideal in the motto 'Verso l'alto' - always towards the highest.

He died of polio at the age of 24, but the Catholic Church erected him as a model of charity.

More than 30 years after his beatification by John Paul II in 1990, the Vatican recognized a second miracle in late 2024: the inexplicable healing of a young American man in a coma.

This canonization ceremony, the first for Pope Leo XIV since his election in May, takes place in the middle of the Jubilee , the "Holy Year" of the Catholic Church, for which more than 24 million people have already come to Rome , according to the Vatican .