London-born Italian, who died in 2006, built websites to spread Catholic teaching and is credited with two miracles
Pope Leo XIV has declared the London-born Italian Carlo Acutis, who died in 2006 age 15, the Catholic church’s first millennial saint during an open-air mass in a packed St Peter’s Square.
Carlo, who died of leukaemia, built websites to spread Catholic teaching, earning him the nickname “God’s influencer”. He was canonised alongside Pier Giorgio Frassati, another young Catholic activist, who died a century ago.
Leo said both men created “masterpieces” out of their lives by dedicating them to God. A hour before the Mass, St Peter’s Square was already full with pilgrims, many of them young millennial Italians.
“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”.
