By Catherine Pepinster
CARLO ACUTIS, who died of leukaemia aged just 15 in 2006, is, for a Church longing to reach out to young people, a dream candidate for sainthood. He was very much a teenager of his time: he liked sports, played the saxophone and was bought a PlayStation when he was eight (though he limited himself to one hour a week of gaming). But alongside these typical contemporary interests was a deep faith, expressed through protectiveness towards bullied children at school, and concern for the poor and the homeless of Milan, where he lived with his family. He also put his computing skills to use for the Church. He would build websites for churches and created an exhibition of eucharistic miracles. He expressed himself in decidedly modern terms: “The Eucharist is my highway to Heaven.”
Behind the headlines saluting Acutis’ sanctity, there is, though, a tragedy: that a young boy with so much promise died at such a young age. Yet his mother, Antonia Salzano, told me: “It is a comfort to me that Carlo is a sign of hope that holiness remains possible in the twenty-first century.” Carlo was born in London in 1991, when his mother and his merchant banker father, Andrea Acutis, were working in Britain, and he was baptised in the Church of Our Lady of Dolours run by the Servite Order in Chelsea, west London on 3 May 1991. A few months later, the family moved to Milan to run their publishing and insurance businesses.
Even at the age of three, Antonia says, Carlo loved to visit churches and to pray there. His religious fervour was a surprise. “I was not very religious myself,” she explains. “But when Carlo was five I had a crisis because my father died. Carlo inspired me to change. In that way, Carlo saved me. He helped me understand that in receiving Holy Communion we have the real presence of God. It is not just a symbol. This was the discovery of my life.”
Antonia recalls: “I could see always that there was something special about Carlo, yet he was also an ordinary boy. He liked sports, having friends, he loved animals. Then, when he was six years old, he first used a computer. From the age of nine he was studying computer programming and he knew he could use the internet for evangelising.”
Already Carlo had a firm grasp of the heart of the Christian faith. “He said that the essence of God is love.” In 2006 he became ill. At first his family thought he had flu but he was diagnosed with leukaemia, and within five days he was dead. He knew he was dying, his mother told me. “He said death was a passage from life. You have to live every day as if it’s your last. As a mother I had to trust in God, that there is a reason for what happens. If we offer our suffering to God, then he can use it.”
Carlo had been concerned about the poor, asking his parents for money to help the homeless, taking them sleeping bags. His kindness had been well known in Milan, so there were calls for him to be made a saint as soon as he died. For Antonia, perhaps the most remarkable miracle of all is that after his death she became a mother again. “Carlo was my only child. I thought it was too late for me to be a mother again. Then four years after he died Carlo appeared to me in a dream. He said I would be a mother again. I was 44. And then I became pregnant and I had twins, a boy and a girl.”
Antonia hopes that Michele and Francesca will be with her and their father at St Peter’s in Rome when the canonisation ceremony takes place. And what if Carlo is made a patron saint of something? “It should be the internet,” she suggested. “There are so many dangers in life today, including online, but Carlo showed how it is still possible to live well, to think of others, to have values.”
When he is declared a saint, Carlo Acutis will join a list of more than 900 people canonised so far by Pope Francis. This includes 813 people massacred by Ottoman forces in Otranto in 1480. Others include Popes John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul II, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Archbishop Óscar Romero and Cardinal John Henry Newman – and almost all the rest are also priests, nuns and monks. Yet during Lent, Francis suggested that perhaps there should be more ordinary people canonised, saying that saints should be “those who fully become themselves, who realise the vocation of every person”. Above all, he said, saints are not unreachable “exceptions of humanity” but “ordinary people” who worked diligently to grow in virtue.
That there are so many more priests and religious among those who are made saints rather than ordinary laypeople is in part due to the large costs involved – it is often observed that religious congregations have the funds, the motivation and the resources to push for the canonisation of their founder.
Just how time-consuming and complex canonisation can be is highlighted by the case of Carlo Acutis. Officials from Rome investigating his life talked to 500 witnesses, including his family as well as doctors, scientists and lawyers. A postulator is required to get each case through the Vatican’s legal treacle. In 2016 Pope Francis reformed the rules on saint-making in response to allegations of inflated fees and conflicts of interest, but it remains an expensive process. Carlo’s family is in a position to cover the costs.
Pope Francis may want more ordinary people to be saintly role models, especially for young people – but further reforms to Rome’s costly saint-making system will be needed if the Church is going to honour others who, like Carlo Acutis, “fully become themselves”. – The Tablet
