By Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service
[Vatican City – CNS] – Pope Francis formally recognized 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 May 23, 2024 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 May 23 that the pope had signed the decrees and that he would convene a consistory to set a date for the canonization of Acutis and other future saints: Blesseds Giuseppe Allamano; Marie-Léonie Paradis of Québec, Canada; Elena Guerra; and eight Franciscan friars and three Maronite laymen who were martyred in Damascus, Syria, in 1860 (see related news item, below).
Blessed Carlo Acutis was born and baptized 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 volunteered at a church-run soup kitchen, helped the poor in his neighbourhood, assisted children struggling with their homework, played saxophone, soccer and video games, and loved making videos with his dogs and cats, according to carloacutis.com, the website dedicated to his cause for canonization.
“To always be close to Jesus, that’s my life plan,” he wrote when he was 7 years old.
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 become tan, “but when they sit before Eucharistic Jesus, they become saints.”
When he was only 15, he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia and died Oct. 12, 2006. He had said, “I’m happy to die because I’ve lived my life without wasting even a minute of it doing things that wouldn’t have pleased God,” according to carloacutis.com.
His mortal remains were moved to the municipal cemetery in Assisi in 2007 to fulfill his wish to be in the city of St. Francis. Then his remains were moved to the Shrine of the Renunciation at the Church of St. Mary Major in Assisi in 2019. He was buried wearing Nike sneakers, black jeans and an athletic warmup jacket — clothes he was used to wearing every day.
In February 2020, the pope formally recognized a miracle attributed to Acutis’ intercession and in October that year, the teen was beatified during a Mass at the Basilica of St. Francis. An estimated 117,000 pilgrims visited the teen’s tomb in just the first year after his beatification, the Diocese of Assisi said the day before his feast day, Oct. 12, 2021.
The two miracles attributed to the intercession of the teen involved alleged miraculous recoveries for a young boy in Brazil in 2013 and a young woman in Florence in 2022.
The miracle Pope Francis recognized May 23, 2024, which paves the way for the blessed’s canonization, involved a young woman who was born in Costa Rica in 2001 and moved to Florence in 2018 to study.
The woman fell from her bicycle at 4 a.m. July 2, 2022, and suffered a serious head injury, according to the dicastery website. Even after emergency surgery removing part of her skull to reduce severe intracranial pressure, doctors warned her family she could die at any moment.
An associate of the young woman’s mother began praying to Blessed Acutis the same day, and the mother went to Assisi and prayed at the blessed’s tomb July 8 — the same day the young woman began to breathe on her own again. She slowly recovered basic mobility and a CT scan showed the hemorrhage was gone. After a period of rehabilitation therapy and a complete recovery, she and her mother visited his tomb Sept. 2.
Pope Francis has urged young people to learn about Blessed Acutis, who “did a great deal of good things,” despite his short life.
“Above all, he was impassioned by Jesus; and since he was very good at getting around on the internet, he used it in the service of the Gospel, spreading love for prayer, the witness of faith and charity toward others,” the pope told young Italians Jan. 29.
“Prayer, witness and charity” were the hallmarks of Blessed Acutis’ life and should be a key part of the life of every Christian, he said.
-30-
© OSV News / Our Sunday Visitor, Inc. 2024 – from CNS Vatican bureau, used with permission.
Pope Francis signs decrees advancing several sainthood causes
By Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service
[Vatican City – CNS] – In addition to clearing the way for the canonization of Blessed Carlo Acutis, Pope Francis signed decrees in seven other sainthood causes, including that of Blessed Giuseppe Allamano, founder of the Consolata Missionaries, who also is now ready to be declared a saint.
Publishing the decrees May 23, 2024 the Vatican also said Pope Francis will soon convoke a consistory of cardinals in Rome to vote on approving the canonizations of Blessed Carlo Acutis and Blessed Giuseppe Allamano, as well as: eight Franciscan friars and three Maronite laymen who were martyred in Syria in 1860; Canada-born Blessed Marie-Léonie Paradis, founder of the Little Sisters of the Holy Family; and Blessed Elena Guerra, an Italian nun who founded the Oblates of the Holy Spirit.

Blessed Giuseppe Allamano, founder of the Consolata Missionaries, is seen in this undated photo. Pope Francis recognized the miracle needed for his canonization May 23, 2024. (CNS photo/courtesy of the Consolata Missionaries)
According to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, the decree opening the way to Blessed Allamano’s canonization recognized the miraculous healing of Sorino Yanomami, an Indigenous man who was attacked in the Brazilian Amazon by a female jaguar in February 1996, fracturing his skull and causing brain matter to spill out. It took more than eight hours to get him to a hospital. Once there, six Consolata sisters, a Consolata priest and a religious brother set an image of Blessed Allamano by his bedside and began to pray.
He underwent surgery and awoke 10 days later without serious neurological deficits, the dicastery said. He spent two months in a nursing home and returned to his village, resuming “his normal life as a forest-dweller while his health condition remained good and without any adverse consequences of the serious accident he suffered.”
Blessed Allamano, an Italian who lived from 1851 to 1926, was the nephew of St. Giuseppe Cafasso and had as his spiritual director for four years St. John Bosco, founder of the Salesians. He founded the men’s Institute of Consolata Missionaries in 1901 and the women’s branch of the order in 1910.

A holy card features a painting of Italian Precious Blood Missionary Father Giovanni Merlini, who lived from 1795 to 1873. Pope Francis recognized the miracle needed for his beatification May 23, 2024. (CNS photo/courtesy of the Precious Blood Missionaries)
Pope Francis also signed a decree recognizing a miracle attributed to the intercession of Italian Precious Blood Missionary Father Giovanni Merlini, a renowned spiritual director, who lived from 1795 to 1873. The dicastery said he was a spiritual counselor to Pope Pius IX and helped convince the pope to establish the feast of the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, which is celebrated July 1.
The healing accepted as the miracle needed for Merlini’s beatification involved a 68-year-old Italian man suffering from severe gastrointestinal bleeding, which led to anemia and then to renal failure and heart disease. His granddaughter, who attended a parish run by the Precious Blood Missionaries, began praying for Merlini’s intercession and soon, the dicastery said, the man experienced a “rapid, complete and lasting” healing.
Pope Francis also signed decrees recognizing the martyrdom of Polish Father Stanislaw Kostka Streich, a diocesan priest killed Feb. 27, 1938, by a communist agitator as he celebrated Mass, and of Mária Magdolna Bódi, a young Hungarian laywoman shot and killed by a Russian soldier whom she had injured while struggling with him to avoid being raped March 23, 1945.
The dicastery’s account of her martyrdom said the soldier saw her and a small group of women outside a shelter where they had been hiding. He “ordered her to follow him, leading her to the darkest part of the bunker. She obeyed, although aware of the soldier’s ill intentions toward her. Shortly afterward a gunshot was heard coming from inside the bunker and she came out, telling the other women to flee, knowing that her assailant would soon arrive to take revenge for her refusal and the wound she had inflicted on him to defend herself and safeguard her chastity.”

Mária Magdolna Bódi, a young Hungarian laywoman shot and killed by a Russian soldier whom she had injured while struggling with him to avoid being raped March 23, 1945, is seen in this undated photo. Pope Francis recognized her death as martyrdom May 23, 2024, clearing the way for her beatification. (CNS photo/courtesy of the Diocese of Veszprém)
“In fact,” the account continued, “the soldier who had tried to abuse her climbed on the roof of the bunker and shot her several times, hitting her from behind and killing her.”
The formal declarations of martyrdom clear the way for the beatifications of Bódi and Streich.
Pope Francis also signed decrees recognizing that three candidates who are in the early part of the sainthood process lived the Christian virtues to a heroic degree. The three are: Italian Capuchin Father Guglielmo Gattiani, who lived 1914-1999; Ismael Molinero Novillo, a Spanish layman, who lived 1917 to 1938; and Enrico Medi, an Italian layman, who was born in 1911 and died in 1974.
-30-
© OSV News / Our Sunday Visitor, Inc. 2024 – from CNS Vatican bureau, used with permission.