Kyle MacNeill [1]
The Feast of All Saints and All Souls, 1 November 2026,
Eldroth, Clapham
Like a lot of young people these days, Carlo Acutis spent an ungodly amount of his life staring at screens. Born in London in 1991, he grew up an only child in a newly connected world. He wore sweatshirts and Nike trainers. He played Halo and taught himself to write computer code. But there is one big difference between him and most other young people, because last year, Carlo Acutis was officially named a saint.
As well as the internet, Carlo revered another institution: the Catholic Church. From a young age, he was acutely interested in Eucharistic miracles – extraordinary events which, according to Catholics, see consecrated bread or wine suddenly become the actual body or blood of Christ. After his First Communion he told his mother, “To always be united to Jesus: This is my life plan.”
In 2004, Carlo started to research eucharistic miracles from around the world, and he developed a website to document them. His aim was to connect with other young Catholics. Courtney Mares, his biographer, said “He was personally convinced that the scientific evidence would help people … come back to Mass.”
Carlo unveiled his online archive in October 2006, but just a few days after it launched, he fell ill. He was diagnosed with leukaemia, with little chance of recovery. “Death has become the passage towards life,” he told his mother, before falling into a coma, suffering a brain haemorrhage, and passing away. He was just 15.
His spirit lived on. The website he’d built helped introduce Eucharistic miracles to a mass audience across the globe and was translated into 17 languages. A physical exhibition linked to his work toured internationally, was shown in thousands of parishes worldwide, and is still touring today.
Carlo is revered not just for his use of technology, but also his dedication to living virtuously. “I think that prayer was truly the great secret of his saintly life,” Mares says. But the website was key to creating a halo effect, heightening his reputation as a blessed figure.
“The process of identifying someone as a saint is long and careful and quite bureaucratic,” says Tim Hutchings, associate professor of religious ethics at the University of Nottingham. “It starts when some Catholics decide that they really think someone should be a saint. They start a campaign to prove to their local bishop that this person lived an incredibly holy life, or died for their faith.” And so it was in 2012, that the Archdiocese of Milan – where Carlo’s family had moved when he was a child – started a cause for canonisation, paving the way for sainthood. It may surprise you to know that saints are still made regularly; Francis recognised well over 900 of them during his time as Pope. After being named a “Servant of God” in 2013, Carlo was venerated by Pope Francis in 2018, and in September 2025 he was canonised by Pope Leo.
It’s rare for a saint to be so young and unheard of, and still reach this lofty status so soon after their death. Carlo is the first ever millennial saint and has become known as “God’s influencer” and the “patron saint of the internet.”
It’s interesting to find that the Church hierarchy doesn’t pick saints – that it is the ordinary people of the Catholic community who know when they see holiness among them and lead the campaign for a devoted person’s official recognition. But Carlo’s’ popularity as a young role model is a gift to the Church. Professor Hutchings says that “It absolutely makes sense for Catholics to look for a saint of the internet who represents the godly and faithful use of technology.”
Of course the Church knows that the internet has potential for unholy behaviour. Pope Francis warned that today’s digital age constantly tempts young people to ‘self- absorption, isolation, and empty pleasure’. Many devout Christians still struggle with such temptations. As Carlo’s biographer Courtney Mares says, “With technology changing at such a rapid pace today, many Christians are still grappling with how best to live out their faith in the world of laptops, cell phones, and social media.”
But Pope Francis also once called the internet a “gift from God”, and he recognised its potential for spreading the word of Christ – it just depends on how it is applied. Carlo Acutis used technology to promote commitment to Christian teaching, virtuous living, and devotion to the rituals of the local church.
Christians of all traditions will hope that this sainted, but relatable, young man who watched cartoons and surfed the web will resonate with those of his fellow-millennials who are searching for God in these new times and new ways.
On All Saints Day, we give thanks that the saints have always been drawn from among us, and even walk among us still, some of them even dressed in sneakers, sweatshirts, and jeans.
Note
[1] This is a lightly edited version of Kyle MacNeill, How a 15-Year-Old Gamer Became the Patron Saint of the Internet. Wired, 30 September 2024.
