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The venerable Carlo Acutis, who will be beatified in Assisi on October 10, is an example of a teenager who used the Internet to “influence” people to draw closer to God, his mother said.
Oct 03, 2020
By Hannah Brockhaus
The venerable Carlo Acutis, who will be beatified in Assisi on October 10, is an example of a teenager who used the Internet to “influence” people to draw closer to God, his mother said.
“Carlo was able to use social media and especially the Internet as an ‘influencer’ for God,” said Antonia Salzano.
Carlo was 15 years old when he died of leukemia in 2006. He was a computer genius who learned to program and created a website that lists the Eucharistic miracles of the world.
Growing up in the center of Milan, Carlo had a deep love for the Eucharist. He never missed daily mass or worship. He also prayed the rosary frequently and went to confession every week.
From the age of 11, he began to help teach catechism to the children of his parish, and he was always helping the poor and homeless in his neighborhood.
According to Salzano, Carlo experienced ordinary things in an extraordinary way.
“Obviously, being a child of our time, he experienced what all young people of his generation have: computers, video games, soccer, school, friends …” These things may seem common to us, he said, but “He managed to transform it into extraordinary ”.
Like many teenagers, Carlo liked to play video games. His mother said he could teach today’s youth how to properly enjoy them and other technologies, without falling into the traps of using the Internet and social media.
“Because he understood that they were potentially very harmful, very dangerous, he wanted to be the owner of these media, not a slave,” he said. His son practiced the virtue of temperance, he explained, so “a maximum of one hour per week was imposed to use these means of communication.”
“So, for Carlo, surely the first point is to teach young people to have temperance”, continued Salzano, “that is, to understand the need to maintain adequate autonomy and the need to always be able to say ‘no, that’s enough,’ to not become a slave. ”
Salzano said Carlo would say it’s about balance. If someone spends their life just following “influential people,” they might just learn what outfit to wear and “completely forget about God,” he said.
He noted that today’s social networks have become a “yardstick” by which people measure their happiness.
“Then you are happy if there is a ‘like’, if there is no ‘like’, you are unhappy,” he said. “Here, Carlo is saying, ‘Not me, but God.’ “Certainly today, in a society based a bit on the ephemeral, on the exaltation of the self, the ego, and where the existence of God is forgotten, Carlo is certainly very prophetic,” added Salzano.
“Carlo reminds us of the most important. The most important thing is to put God first in our life ”.
Salzano explained that his son lived a very modern life, but for him, “faith has always been the same for more than 2,000 years; that is to say, that God exists, He became incarnate, died and rose again for us ”.
“So Carlo is also a messenger of this … But taking him into the modern youth world, he definitely has a lot to teach,” he said.
Another lesson you can teach others is the good that can be done in your own neighborhood.
Rather than buy himself games, Carlo used his little money to buy things for the homeless in his area, like a sleeping bag.
His son didn’t like money being wasted on useless things, he said, and he didn’t care about fashion or clothing brands.
Salzano said: “If I told you: ‘Carlo, let’s buy one more pair of shoes,’ you would be mad [and reply] Mom, one is enough. Let’s help the poor. ‘
“He was a very, very straightforward guy. For him, one pair of pants was as good as another, one pair of shoes was as good as another, ”said Salzano.
In an interview in May 2019, Carlo’s mother said that “from the age of three or four he showed great interest in Christ, in the Blessed Virgin. When we went for a walk, he always wanted to go inside the church, greet Jesus and send kisses to the cross. ”
Salzano said that she herself “was not the ideal model of a Catholic mother” when her son was born, and “was quite ignorant in matters of faith.” But thanks to the influence of Carlo, she returned to faith.
“So little by little I got closer to the Church. I started to go back to mass. And this was actually because of Carlo. Carlo was for me a kind of little ‘Savior’ ”, he said. ––CNA
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