Carlo Acutis, the saint next door: A teen computer whiz becomes a millennial saint

CHICAGO — At a Catholic school in Pope Leo XIV’s hometown, fifth graders read comic books about Carlo Acutis’ life entitled “Digital Disciple.” They draw pictures of what the teenage Italian computer whiz might have had as his cellphone wallpaper. They discuss the miracles that allegedly occurred thanks to Acutis’ intercession.

In the run-up to Acutis’ canonization Sunday, it is all Acutis, all the time at the Blessed Carlo Acutis Parish and school in Chicago. The parish was the first in the United States to take its name from Acutis, who died in 2006 at age 15 and is about to become history’s first millennial saint.

In recent years, Acutis has shot to near rockstar-like fame among many young Catholics, generating a global following the likes of which the Catholic Church hasn’t seen in ages. Much of that popularity is thanks to a concerted campaign by the Vatican to give the next generation of faithful a relatable, modern-day role model, who used his technological talents to spread the faith.

He’s not a world figure like Mother Teresa or St. John Paul II, but rather a “saint next door,” said the Rev. Ed Howe, the pastor at Blessed Carlo Acutis Parish in Chicago’s Northwest Side. “He’s someone who I think a lot of young people today say, ‘I could be the saint next door.'”

Leo, a Chicago native, will declare Acutis a saint Sunday in his first canonization ceremony, alongside another popular Italian, Pier Giorgio Frassati. Both ceremonies had been scheduled for earlier this year but were postponed following the death in April of Pope Francis.

It was Francis who had fervently willed the Acutis sainthood case forward, convinced that the church needed someone like him to attract young Catholics to church while addressing the promises and perils of the digital age.

Acutis was precociously savvy with computers before the social media era, reading college-level textbooks on programming and coding as a youngster. But he 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.

“Carlo was well aware that the whole apparatus of communications, advertising and social networking can be used to lull us, to make us addicted to consumerism and buying the latest thing on the market,” Francis wrote in a 2019 document. “Yet he knew how to use the new communications technology to transmit the Gospel, to communicate values and beauty.”

Leo inherited…