Carlo Acutis, a digital pioneer, used his computer skills to spread Catholic teaching globally.Published On 7 Sep 20257 Sep 2025A London-born Italian teenager, known as “God’s influencer”, who was an early adopter of the internet to spread Catholic teachings, has been made the church’s first millennial saint at a ceremony led by Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican.Leo canonised Carlo Acutis, who died in 2006 aged 15, in a ceremony attended by thousands on Sunday in St Peter’s Square. At the Mass, the pontiff also canonised Pier Giorgio Frassati, who died in 1924 but was widely recognised for his charitable work.During a speech at the event, Leo credited Acutis and Frassati for making “masterpieces” out of their lives, warning congregants that the “greatest risk in life is to waste it outside of God’s plan”.Often seen photographed in his casual outfits, with scruffy hair, T-shirts and sunglasses, Acutis cuts a different figure from the church’s saints of the past who were often depicted in solemn paintings. This has built a global following for Acutis, with the church intending him to be a more relatable saint for digitally-focused young people today.Leo said Acutis and Frassati’s lives are an “invitation to all of us, especially young people, not to squander our lives, but to direct them upwards and make them masterpieces”.Acutis was born in London in 1991 but moved early on in his life to the northern Italian city of Milan with his famil …
