Chai Brady
Blessed Carlo Acutis Pope Francis has formally recognised a miracle attributed to the intercession of Blessed Carlo Acutis, a 15-year-old Italian teenager whose birth in 1991 will make him the first ‘millennial’ to become a saint.
In a meeting on May 23 with Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Dicastery for Saints’ Causes, the Pope signed decrees advancing the sainthood causes of Blessed Acutis, as well as one woman, and six men.
The Vatican announced that the Pope had signed the decrees and that he would convene a consistory to set a date for the canonisation of Acutis.
Blessed Acutis was born and baptised in London to Italian parents in 1991, but the family moved back to Milan, Italy, while he was still an infant.
After he started high school, he began to curate, create or design websites, including one for a local parish, for his Jesuit-run high school and for the Pontifical Academy Cultorum Martyrum, according to the saints’ dicastery.
He also used his computer skills to create an online database of Eucharistic miracles around the world. He was devoted to Our Lady, praying the rosary every day, and to the Eucharist.
“The Eucharist is the highway to heaven,” he wrote. When people sit in the sun, they get tan, “but when they sit before Eucharistic Jesus, they become saints”.
The miracle recognised on Thursday is related to a woman from Costa Rica.
On July 8, 2022, Liliana prayed at Blessed Carlo’s tomb in Assisi, leaving a letter describing her plea. Six days earlier, on July 2, her daughter Valeria had fallen from her bicycle in Florence, where she was attending university.
She had suffered severe head trauma, and required craniotomy surgery and the removal of the right occipital bone to reduce pressure on her brain, with what her doctors said was a very low chance of survival.
Liliana’s secretary began praying immediately to Blessed Carlo Acutis, and on July 8, Liliana made her pilgrimage to his tomb in Assisi.
That same day, the hospital informed her that Valeria had begun to breath spontaneously. The next day, she began to move and partially regain her speech.
On July 18, a CAT scan proved that her haemorrhaging had disappeared, and on August 11 Valeria was moved to rehabilitation therapy. She made quick progress, and on September 2 Valeria and Liliana made another pilgrimage to Assisi to thank Blessed Carlo for his intercession.
In the decree released on Thursday, Pope Francis announced he will convene a Consistory of Cardinals to deliberate the canonisation of Blessed Carlo Acutis, as well as Blessed Giuseppe Allamano, Marie-Léonie Paradis, and Elena Guerra.