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With Carlo Acutis, the Catholic Church has found a new figurehead for the young generation. Business with the blessed and the saints is valuable in other ways as well.
Carlo Acutis will be officially acquitted in Assisi on October 10.
The boy in Nike sneakers, jeans and a sports jacket is surely a blessing to the troubled Catholic Church. Carlo Acutis, who died fourteen years ago, was beatified in Assisi on October 10. Since then, almost 35,000 people have made a pilgrimage to the teenager’s tomb in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. Even the website of the diocese has five times more visits than usual.
On the Monday after the evening mass, however, the teenager’s grave was closed again. The objective is to avoid large concentrations and relieve the security forces, most of which were deployed voluntarily. If the situation around the coronavirus calms down again, the grave of the 15-year-old will be accessible again from next May. Although the boy has received such illustrious nicknames as “Influencer of God” or “Cyber-Apostle” due to his preference for the Internet, his followers prefer physicality to virtual contact. Here, kneeling before the corpse, it is more effective to ask for minor or major miracles.
Healing of a six year old
Since his death in October 2006, Carlo has been revered by Christian believers around the world. Especially since a simple request can lead to spontaneous twists of fate, at least that is what the numerous testimonies of believers who report rationally inexplicable events suggest. According to the Vatican, at least one miracle is guaranteed. And that is what is known to be needed for a beatification. It dates back to 2010, when 6-year-old Matheus in Brazil was cured overnight from his congenital pancreatic disease. The day before, the priest had put on a piece of the shirt that Carlo had put on the boy.
Carlo Acutis himself had a great weakness for such processes. When he was only eleven years old, he created an online directory of Eucharistic miracles, for example, when a host turns red like blood or even turns to flesh during the Lord’s Supper. After the child’s untimely death, the “Friends of Carlo Acutis” association created a traveling exhibition with some 140 good billboards from their collection and published a book. In the United States alone, the exhibition was shown in about 10,000 parishes.
The boy could not copy his parents’ enthusiasm for the religious dimension. The mother says of herself that she used to go to church only three times: at her first communion, at confirmation and finally on the occasion of Carlo’s baptism. Her husband, an investment banker who worked in London until Carlos was born, was even less interested. The child must have had this rather extraordinary passion in the cradle. Not least, she was fed by the Polish nanny, an ardent admirer of Pope John Paul II.
“Highway to Heaven”
As soon as he could walk, Carlo wanted to go to church every day. He always sat up front, facing the altar. There he prayed or joined in quiet contemplation alternately with Our Lady and with Jesus. The boy began to develop a special preference as a catechist for the celebration of the Eucharist. While the Lord’s Supper itself is not of major importance to many Christians, the teenager referred to it as his “way to heaven.”
In his spare time, it is said, Carlo looked after homeless people in the Milan neighborhood where he lived. He used the money in his pocket to buy sleeping bags, food and other utensils necessary for his expenses. But the boy was also very empathetic in other ways. To greet the school janitor, he reportedly sometimes went off course a lot. The number of friends the boy made for himself in this way did not become apparent to the parents until his funeral – the church was full of people they had never seen before.
Family members remember Carlos’s happy disposition with special affection. In fact, there is hardly a photo in which he is not laughing or smiling. Even when he was diagnosed with leukemia, he did not lose his good humor. In this context, it is not surprising that the child prodigy had predicted his own death. Namely, in a video that he had made three months earlier, but which was only found the day after the funeral. “When I am 70 kilos, I will die,” he said to the camera and looked up at the sky like a delight. The end of the body meant for him the beginning of what he longed for throughout his life.
A life like in a picture book, at least for the Catholic Church. And because it’s nice to make headlines around the world with anything but scandals, it was a quick record until Carlo Acutis was beatified. Pope Francis personally campaigned for him. Carlo once said “how to use new communication technology to transmit the gospel.” In church circles it is assumed that the child will be declared “patron of the Internet” when canonized.
His way of life undoubtedly makes Acutis a great role model for the new generation of the sick church. It shows that you can lead a religious life even if you are mostly online. Clarifications during the canonical procedure showed that Carlo almost exclusively visited religious sites on the Internet. Besides spirituality, he was only interested in soccer. The boy himself set a weekly time limit to use his Playstation.
The first millennium
Acutis is the first representative of the millennium to be beatified. He may be young, but not the youngest on the list. Antonietta Meo of Rome, who died in 1937 at the age of six, occupies this rank. The girl became ill with cancer and wrote more than a hundred letters to Jesus, God and the Holy Spirit. After his leg was amputated, hoping to stop the cancer, he wrote, for example, to the Almighty: “Oh, give me my little leg back, but if you don’t want to, your will be done.”
The canonization of little Antonietta is due to Joseph Ratzinger, who managed to overturn a rule that was previously in force: children could not be canonized or canonized because they were too young to fulfill an important characteristic: having lived an exemplary Christian life. Until then, the only exception was when children were killed for their beliefs. Then they could be canonized as martyrs.
The greatest “producer” of blessed and holy in the history of the Church is John Paul II. The Polish Pope beatified and canonized 483 people during his tenure. That’s more than double the number since the introduction of the canonical process some 400 years ago. These procedures cost between 50,000 and 250,000 euros and, therefore, are also an important source of income for the church treasury. As a general rule, expenses are borne by whoever submits the application, that is, the dioceses or the orders.
Shortly before his death, Carlo Acutis had expressed the desire to be buried in Assisi. The family had a vacation home in the Umbrian city, where Saint Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) was born. Carlo emulated his great role model, but otherwise tried to go his own way. How important this was for the child is shown by one of his most cited sayings: “Everyone is born as original, but many die as photocopies.
