Vatican City (AFP)
A British-born Italian teenager who dedicated his short life to spreading the faith online and helping the poor will be beatified by the Catholic Church Saturday.
That leaves him just one miracle away from becoming the world's first millennial saint.
Internet and computer-mad youngster Carlo Acutis, who died of leukaemia in 2006 aged 15, was placed on the path to sainthood after the Vatican ruled he had miraculously saved another boy's life.
The Vatican claims he interceded from heaven in 2013 to cure a Brazilian boy suffering from a rare pancreatic disease.
He will be beatified in Assisi, the home of his idol Saint Francis, who dedicated his life to the poor. Some 3,000 people are expected to follow the ceremony on giant screens set up in five squares in the central Italian city.
- 'Computer genius' -
Acutis, dubbed "the cyberapostle of the Eucharist", was born in London to Italian parents, and moved to Milan with them as a young boy.
"He was considered a computer genius... But what did he do? He didn't use these media to chat, have fun," his mother Antonia Salzano said in an interview with Vatican News.
Instead, "his zeal for the Lord" drove him to make a website on miracles, she said.
The millennial, whose body lies in state in Assisi, dressed in a tracksuit and trainers, also warned his contemporaries that the internet could be a curse as well as a blessing.
Pope Francis referred to him last year, in a warning to youngsters that social networks could foment hate.
"(Acutis) saw that many young people, wanting to be different, really end up being like everyone else, running after whatever the powerful set before them with the mechanisms of consumerism and distraction," Francis said.
"As a result, Carlo said, 'everyone is born as an original, but many people end up dying as photocopies'. Don't let that happen to you!" he said.
- Kind to the poor -
Acutis was religious from a young age, despite his mother saying his family had rarely attended church.
When he wasn't writing computer programmes or playing football, Acutis was known in his neighbourhood for his kindness to those living on society's margins.
"With his savings, he bought sleeping bags for homeless people and in the evening he brought them hot drinks," his mother said this week, according to the Catholic News Agency.
"He said it was better to have one less pair of shoes if it meant being able to do one more good work," she said.
He also volunteered at a soup kitchen in Milan. Assisi bishop Domenico Sorrentino said this month that a soup kitchen for the poor would be opened in Acutis's honour.
"When he died, at the funeral, the church was full of poor people. Everyone else wondered what they were doing there. Well, Carlo used to help them in secret," said Nicola Gori, who represented Acutis's beatification case.
"The family knew about it, because his mum would go with him, since he was only 15 years old. He would give them sleeping bags and food, which is why they wanted to attend the funeral", he added.
Should Acutis later be credited with the second miracle necessary for sainthood, supporters have suggested he could become the Patron Saint of the internet -- though there already is one, 7th-century scholar Isidore de Seville.
-END OF ARTICLE-
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From Wikipedia:
Blessed Carlo Acutis (3 May 1991 – 12 October 2006) was an Italian Catholic computer programmer.[2] He was best known for documenting Eucharistic miracles around the world and cataloguing them all onto a website that he created in the months before his death from leukemia.[3][2] He was noted for his cheerfulness and his computer skills as well as for his deep devotion to the Eucharist which became a core theme of his life.[4]
The calls for him to be beatified began not long after he died and gained significant momentum in 2013 after the cause commenced and he became titled as a Servant of God – the first stage on the path towards sainthood.[2][5] Pope Francis declared him to be Venerable on 5 July 2018; the same pope approved a miracle attributed to him which enables Acutis to be beatified. The beatification was celebrated in Assisi at the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi on 10 October 2020.
Life
Carlo Acutis was born in London on 3 May 1991 to a wealthy Italian family.[4][6] His parents, Andrea Acutis and Antonia Acutis (née Salzano), worked in London and Germany, settling in Milan not long after their son's birth in September 1991.[2][4] He became devoted as a child to the Mother of God and recited frequent rosaries as a sign of his devotion to her.[3] He became a frequent communicant after the reception of his First Communion (aged seven at the convent of St. Ambrogio ad Nemus) and made the effort either before or after Mass to reflect in front of the tabernacle. Acutis also made his confession once a week. Those around him knew he had a passion for computers.[4][2] He spent his school education in Milan and his high school studies were under the Jesuits at the Instituto Leone XIII. He also had several models as his guides for life: Saint Francis of Assisi[2], Saints Francisco and Jacinta Marto, Saint Dominic Savio, Saint Tarcisius, and Saint Bernadette Soubirous.[2]Acutis was worried about those friends of his whose parents were divorcing and so he would invite those friends to his home to support them. He defended the rights of the disabled and defended disabled peers at school when bullies mocked them. He loved travelling but loved to visit Assisi more than other places.[4]
A servant in the Acutis household, named Rajeesh, converted from Hinduism to Catholicism after being inspired by Acutis' faith.[7][8][9]
He contracted leukemia and offered his pain for both Pope Benedict XVI and for the Universal Church in which he said that "I offer all the suffering I will have to suffer for the Lord, for the Pope, and the Church". He had asked his parents to take him on pilgrimages to the sites of all the known Eucharistic miracles in the world but his worsening health prevented this from happening. Being passionate about computers led Acutis to make a website dedicated to careful cataloging of each reported miracle and he did this in 2005 (he had cataloged each case since he was eleven). He appreciated Blessed Giacomo Alberione's initiatives to use the media to evangelize and proclaim the Gospel and aimed to do this with the website that he had created. He also liked film and comic editing.[3] It was on the website that he said: "the more Eucharist we receive, the more we will become like Jesus, so that on this earth we will have a foretaste of heaven".
The doctor treating him asked him if he was suffering much pain and he responded that "there are people who suffer much more than me".[4] He died on 12 October 2006 at 6:45am from M3 fulminant leukemia and he was buried in Assisi in accordance with his wishes.[2][3]
Both Raffaello Martinelli and Angelo Comastri helped in organizing a travelling photo exhibition of all those Eucharistic miracle sites in his honor. It has since travelled to dozens of different countries across five continents.[10]
Beatification
The Lombard Episcopal Conference approved the petition for the canonization cause to be introduced at their meeting in 2013.[5] The opening of the diocesan investigation was held on 15 February 2013 with Cardinal Angelo Scola inaugurating the process and then concluding it later on 24 November 2016. The formal introduction to the cause came on 13 May 2013 and Acutis became titled as a Servant of God. Pope Francis confirmed his life of heroic virtue on 5 July 2018 and named him as Venerable.[11]On 14 November 2019, the Medical Council of the Congregation for Saints' Causes expressed a positive opinion about a miracle that had happened in Brazil that was attributed to Acutis' intercession.[12] On the seventh anniversary of Acutis in Brazil, Luchiana Vianna took her son Mattheus who was born with a pancreatic defect that made eating difficult, to a prayer service. Beforehand, Vianna had already prayed a novena asking for his intercession, while during the service her son simply asked that he wouldn't "throw up so much". Immediately following the service, Mattheus informed his mother of the healing, and asked for solid food when he came home, as he had been on an all-liquid diet.[13][14] After investigation, Pope Francis verified the miracle's authenticity in a decree on 21 February 2020, enabling Acutis' beatification. Within a month of the decree, the country experienced its first wave of COVID-19 cases, which caused the beautification ceremony to be postponed while the country was on lockdown. It was rescheduled for 10 October 2020, and was held at the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi in Assisi, Italy, with Cardinal Agostino Vallini presiding on the pope's behalf.[15]
The current postulator for this cause is Francesca Consolini.
Carlo Acutis - Wikipedia
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