‘God’s influencer’ to be made first millennial saint in April

A London-born teenager nicknamed “God’s influencer” for his online skills will be made a saint in April.

Carlo Acutis, who died of leukaemia in 2006 at the age of 15, will be the first millennial – a person born in the early 1980s to late 1990s – to be canonised by the Catholic church.

Pope Francis previously cleared the way for him to be made a saint by attributing a second miracle to him in May.

The teenager has also been labelled “the patron saint of the internet” for his work recording miracles online and running websites for Catholic organisations.

He was previously beatified – attributed his first miracle – in 2020, the healing of a Brazilian child diagnosed with a congenital disease.

Though Carlo Acutis was born in the UK, he died in Monza, in Italy, having spent much of his childhood there.

His body was moved to the town of Assisi a year after his death, and it currently resides on display alongside other relics linked to him.

Mr Acutis gained his nickname partly by designing websites for his parish and school, but he mainly became known for launching a website seeking to document every reported Eucharistic miracle.

The website was launched online days before his death and has since been translated into several different languages, and used as the basis for an exhibition which has travelled around the world.

Miracles are typically investigated and assessed over a period of several months, with a person being eligible for sainthood after they have two to their name.

For something to be deemed a miracle it typically requires an act seen to be beyond what is possible in nature – such as through the sudden healing of a person deemed to be near-death.

The second miracle attributed to Mr Acutis came in 2024, when a university student in Florence was healed despite having bleeding on the brain after suffering head trauma.

Pope Francis told an audience at the Vatican that the teenager would be made a miracle during the weekend beginning 26 April.