Saint Carlo Acutis

St. Carlo was born in London on May 3, 1991 AD. His parents, Andrea and Antonia, were Italians living in London for work. He was baptised on May 18, 1991 AD at the church of Our Lady of Dolours on Fulham Road.

In September 1991 AD the family went back to Milan, where he grew up. Pope Leo XIV later said that St. Carlo first met Jesus in his family, thanks to his parents.

St. Carlo received his First Communion on June 16, 1998 AD, at a convent of nuns at Perego, near Lecco. He was seven, younger than the usual age. From then on he went to Mass every day, with his spiritual director's permission.

He also began praying the Rosary every day. Pope Francis said St. Carlo took his run-up toward Heaven from the day of his First Communion.

On May 24, 2003 AD, St. Carlo was confirmed at his Milan parish, Santa Maria Segreta. He chose to teach catechism there to children preparing for Confirmation. In September 2005 AD he started at the Jesuits' classical high school in Milan, the Istituto Leone XIII.

He played football, loved animals and liked making his classmates and teachers laugh. Given a diary, he used it to give himself good and bad marks for his conduct. He spent his first savings on a sleeping bag for a homeless man he passed on the way to Mass.

St. Carlo taught himself to write computer programs. At eleven he began researching the Eucharistic miracles recorded in history. He built a website cataloguing them, and an exhibition he used to teach catechism to children.

By 2020 AD the exhibition had been shown in more than 10,000 parishes around the world. Pope Francis wrote in Christus Vivit that St. Carlo used the new communications technology to transmit the Gospel.

St. Carlo spent the whole summer of 2006 AD designing a website for a volunteering project. The same summer he also set up the website of a Pontifical Academy. That summer he asked his mother whether she thought he should become a priest.

On October 2, 2006 AD, early in the new school year, he fell ill. At first the illness was taken for a bad flu.

On October 8, 2006 AD, doctors at a Milan clinic found M3 leukaemia, the most aggressive form. The next day he was moved to San Gerardo Hospital in Monza. On October 10 he asked for the Anointing of the Sick and Communion, certain he would soon die.

St. Carlo offered his sufferings for the Pope and for the Church. On October 11 a brain haemorrhage caused by the leukaemia put him into a coma. His heart stopped at 6:45 the next morning, October 12; he was fifteen.

St. Carlo's funeral on October 14, 2006 AD filled Santa Maria Segreta, and many mourners had to stand outside. Many of them were poor people of Milan whom he had helped. In 2007 AD his body was moved to Assisi, because he had wanted to stay in the city of St. Francis.

On October 10, 2020 AD, he was beatified in the Basilica of St. Francis at Assisi. His parents carried the reliquary holding his heart to the altar.

In October 2013 AD, a Brazilian boy born with a malformed pancreas touched a picture of St. Carlo at a prayer service. At home he ate everything on his plate without vomiting. The Church recognised his healing as the miracle for St. Carlo's beatification.

On July 8, 2022 AD, a mother prayed at his tomb for her daughter Valeria, badly hurt in a bicycle fall in Florence. That day Valeria began to breathe on her own, a healing the Church recognised as a miracle in 2024 AD. Pope Leo XIV canonised St. Carlo on September 7, 2025 AD, before more than 80,000 people in St. Peter's Square.