Pope Francis clears way for Italian teen Carlo Acutis to become first millennial saint
Pope Francis cleared the way Thursday for an Italian teenager who faithfully cataloged Catholic miracles online before dying in 2006 to become the first millennial saint.
𓄧The Vatic꧃an attributed a second miracle to Carlo Acutis, who succumbed to leukemia when he was just 15 years old.
Acutis — who was informally known as “God’s influencer” — was responsible for saving the life of a young Costa Rican woman well after his own death,
In July 2022, t෴he woman named Valeria suffered severe head trauma after she had fallen from her bicycle in Florence, where she w𒆙as attending a university, and required intense craniotomy surgery, but doctors had little faith she could recover.
Her desperate mother made the pilgrimage to Acutis’ tomb in Assisi, where his remains are on display, and prayed for her daughter’s recovery.
A week after the accident, Valeria suddenly began to move and partially regained her speech, with a CAT scan later show൩ing that her hemorrhage had disappeared.
Her recovery was so quick that she and her mother made a trip back to Assisi the followin💜g month to thank him for stepping in.
The Pope and the head of the Vatican’s saint-making d🌠epartment, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, ruled this week that the shocking recovery qualified as a miracle worthy of advancing Acutis to sainthood.
The attribution of a second miracle meansꦉ he can now be elevated to sainthood, but the Vatican did not say when this wouldꦉ happen.
Canonization is a painstaking, and usually lengthy, four-step process: First, a candidate must be named a Servant of God; secondly,ꩲ a life of “heroic virtue” must🦂 be proved; thirdly, after a verified miracle, the candidate is beatified and referred to as “Blessed.” Finally, after another miracle is confirmed, the candidate is canonized and considered a saint.
During his limited time on Earth, Acutis becam🌸e known for launching a website that documented every reported Eucharistic miracle.
He also frequently ministered to the homeless and h��uಌngry in his native Milan.
Due to his “important role in evangelization through the internet,” Acutis was named as a patron of last year’s World Youth Day in Lisbon.
With Post wires
