Pope to make teenage UK influencer a saint

A 15-year-old teenager named Carlo Acutis is set to become a saint because of his proficiency at spreading the teachings of the Catholic church online.

The act which led to him being called “God’s influencer”

The London born teenager died in 2006, meaning he would be the first millennial – a person born in the early 1980s to late 1990s – to be canonised which follows Pope Francis attributing a second miracle to him.

The miracle involved the healing of a university student in Florence who had bleeding on the brain after suffering head trauma.

Carlo Acutis had been beatified – the first step towards sainthood – in 2020, after he was attributed with his first miracle – healing a Brazilian child of a congenital disease affecting his pancreas.

In his lifetime, he designed websites for his parish and school, and became known for launching a website seeking to document every reported Eucharistic miracle, which was launched days before his death.

Mr Acutis’ nickname, God’s influencer, has been attributed to him after his death due to this work.

His website has now been translated into several different languages, and used as the basis for an exhibition which has travelled around the world.

His life is also remembered in the UK, where in 2020, the Archbishop of Birmingham established the Parish of Blessed Carlo Acutis incorporating churches in Wolverhampton and Wombourne.