The story of Carlo Acutis, the teenage saint known as “influencer...

Until this Saturday, October 17th of the year of grace 2020, the physical and real heart of Carlo Acutis, extracted from his body and treated so as not to be corrupted, was exposed in the sanctuary of Spogliazione (Despojo) of the city of Assisi, for veneration of the faithful. The organ was not enclosed in an urn, so that believers could pass around it, as is customary with relics, in order to avoid agglomerations because of the pandemic.

Young Carlo, who died in 2006 at the age of 15, due to fulminant leukemia, was beatified by Pope Francis on the 10th of this month, after he was declared venerable. This foreshadows his future proclamation as a saint.

He may be the patron of the Internet or Internet users: at the age of 6 he was walking around his house in Turin, with a poster attached to his chest that said “computer scientist”. Children’s games. Alternatively, he will serve as the patron of ‘influencers’. “God’s ‘influencer’,” explains his mother, Antonia Salzano.

Carlo was born in London in 1991, the son of a bourgeois family from Turin provisionally installed in the United Kingdom, who soon returned to his city, where the boy attended a private school and then another, of the Jesuits. At the age of 9, he was entertained by an old computer and, according to Carlo’s biographers, he was already working on algorithms. “I wrote computer programs thanks to books bought at the Polytechnic”, explains the mother.

The biographies of those who come to saints usually seem to be exaggerated, written by supporters. Nor should one overlook the paraphernalia that the Catholic Church has codified to raise a mortal to the altars. To become blessed, the deceased must have performed a miracle. Now, Carlo Acutis did his in the church of São Sebastião in Campo Grande (Brazil), in October 2010: he healed Mateus, a 7-year-old boy who suffered from a serious pancreas anomaly, which forced him to drink only fluids. A piece of Carlo’s pajamas performed this sudden miracle, to the point that one day Mateus could start eating normally, like everyone else.

In addition to the miracle, the Catholic ritual provides that during the beatification process a “canonical recognition” of the corpse is carried out. That of the young Acutis took place on January 23, 2019. The body was found uncorrupted. Mother Antonia explains: “My husband didn’t want to see it, but I was there, and he was still our boy, with his height of 1.82 meters, his skin a little darker, his hair black and curly, the same weight ”.

The fact that bodies are incorruptible is not necessarily a celestial phenomenon, since it happens with increasing frequency, to the point that scientists are studying it to see if it is related to the processed foods we eat and the medicines we take.

The canonical ritual also provides for the extraction of relics from candidates for the blessed and saints, fragments of the body and clothing, which will later be venerated by the faithful. In a church in Rome, the guts and heart of St. Joseph of Calasanz, founder of the first popular schools in Europe, are preserved on the main altar.

Despite being the son of agnostic parents, Carlo manifested a special inclination for the Catholic religion since he was a little boy, wanting to visit the churches of the city, taking communion, praying the rosary, dedicating his time as a volunteer in the meal services for the poor … religious activities through the Internet, such as an exhibition dedicated to the Eucharist that went around the world, having been hosted in 10,000 churches.

The secret of all this religiosity would be, says the young man’s mother, a lady full of irony who at that time was “illiterate in the faith”: a Polish nurse devoted to the saint Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II). So much of her son’s religiosity would lead her to convert, as well as her husband.

The memory of the young blessed computer was analyzed by the experts appointed by those who promoted his cause in the Vatican. “They found nothing that was inconvenient,” they say.

The young man’s religious devotion infected his mother, who somehow ended up converting, as well as the house steward, who accompanied him on his way out. Thanks to a smiling and friendly character, Carlo Acutis was easily related to his contemporaries. When he died almost suddenly, at just 15 years old, he was known to many people.

They explain in the Vatican’s “ministry” that it is in charge of the saints, and that Kenneth Woodward christened the “factory of the saints”, that the process of beatification of Acutis began with “popular acclaim”. The saints have been doing this for centuries. In a Catholic community in any part of the world, a person was acclaimed as a saint, began to worship him, and then communicated to the Vatican. It is only about 500 years ago that the saints have been appointed by the Pope.

The procedure includes, in addition to the miracle, the compilation of all documents, acts and testimonies about the person to be beatified, who must demonstrate that he “had heroic virtues”, that is, that in life he was an active witness of the faith.

In addition to everything he did in his brief existence, Carlo Acutis was the “influencer of God” or the “blessed of the Internet”, as he used these instruments to spread his faith in the Christian God. His body is exposed in Assisi, dressed in tracksuit and tennis.