Carlo Acutis: The Saint for Our Time

Matthew Neugebauer

Tuesday, April 15, 2025

Shrine of Carlo Acutis. Stylized dark yellow coffin extended from the wall, with a cutout window displaying the preserved body of a teenaged boy wearing jeans, sneakers, and a track suit. Window has the IHS monogram printed on it.

Shrine of Carlo Acutis in the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Assisi. © Salt + Light Media, 2025.

Carlo Acutis was ahead of his time. He was inspired to use the emerging digital environment to present the Catholic faith in creative ways. I'm thinking of his website full of articles on Eucharistic miracles and Marian apparitions – those types of sites are easily found today, but when it launched in 2004, it was relatively new and rare. With this website, Blessed Carlo gave us a great example of the way teenagers are uniquely adaptable, nimble, and imaginative. They can often pave the way forward by harnessing the power of newly available technologies to communicate the millennia-long heritage of Catholic tradition.

More importantly, his depth of charity for others was exemplary, especially his kindness and compassion. He continually checked in and prayed for those who were struggling, such as friends whose parents had broken marriages. He truly displayed "heroic virtue," including the way he continued to show courage and kindness through his battle with leukemia and his tragically young death at the age of 15.

Carlo Acutis was also a part of our own time. He'll become the first millennial to be canonized as a saint of the Church, a model of holiness for all people, a companion in our prayers, and a source of comfort and guidance for both young people and their parents. What strikes me most about him is just how normal he was. He was curious about coding and programming. He played video games (albeit just an hour a week!), music, soccer with friends, and went to school just like his peers. He didn't shun these everyday relationships and everyday pursuits as "distractions," but saw them as opportunities to find joy in the life God has given us all. Yes, he devoted considerable time to volunteering, praying, and making his beloved pilgrimages to Assisi. He simply refused to see a conflict between intensive spirituality and the joys of life in the world.

The Catholic tradition has a fancy word for that kind of rejection of joy and fun, especially when it takes the form of overzealous piety: “scrupulosity,” and its adjective, “scrupulous.” Often, it's driven by fear and anxiety, a sense of dread that God or others will judge us for potentially sinful actions. Genuine spirituality leads us to self examination and repentance, to be sure, but is always rooted in love, not fear.. It’s meant to increase our joy in God’s loving presence, even in suffering, and heighten our worship of God by deepening our love for our neighbours and friends, and our love for ourselves. Joy in God’s presence, and fun activities with friends that deepen our bonds with them, are valued ways to increase our love for them.

Carlo Acutis was holy, is holy, in part because he wasn’t overly scrupulous. He'd probably say that you can't be holy by being excessively scrupulous: scrupulosity also ends up putting the focus on our own efforts to avoid sin rather than on the love and joy that God offers us, and the relationships he has given us. Carlo would also likely be the first to say that his path to holiness is truly open to everyone, in all of our vocations and circumstances. He continually put this on display with his exemplary charity, devotion, creativity, and loving perseverance in illness and suffering, as part of his very normal life as a teenager in the 21st century. He showed us that the grace of God, given to us in the Blessed Sacrament and shown in the presence of the Virgin Mary, is available to all of us.

So I'm grateful for the life, witness, and continued intercession of soon-to-be-saint Carlo Acutis. I'm grateful that the Church is holding up an example of holiness that speaks of hope and joy in the triumphs, pleasures, trials, and sufferings of life. I pray that we too would be inspired to turn away from an over-scrupulous anxiety about our own actions, and turn to trust in the grace and hope of God.

Soon-to-be-saint Carlo Acutis, pray for us!