[image:catholicregister]

Carlo Acutis, who died of leukaemia aged 15, is set to become the first millennial to be made a saint after his second miracle was recognised by Pope Francis.

The Italian teenager was beatified in 2020 after appearing to have cured a Brazilian boy, Mattheus Vianna, of a serious birth defect which left him unable to keep down his food.

His first miracle, which dates back to February 2014, saw a boy being “fully cured” after he touched Carlo’s relic and said “Stop vomiting”, according to a priest and family friend of Mattheus’s who were present.

The second miracle saw a girl from Costa Rica who was studying in Italy reportedly being healed after suffering a head trauma. She was reportedly cured by the boy after he was invoked by her mother, the daily newspaper of the Italian Bishops’ Conference (CEI), reports.

Pope Francis took the decision to attribute the second miracle to Carlo during a meeting with the head of the Vatican’s saint-making department, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro.

Informally known as “God’s influencer”, Carlo was born in London, but grew up in Milan where he took care of his parish website and later that of a Vatican-based academy. He was well known for using his computer skills to spread the Catholic faith.

Due to his “important role in evangelisation through the internet”, Carlo was named as a patron of last year’s World Youth Day in Lisbon..

“To always be close to Jesus, that’s my life plan,” he wrote when he was 7. When he was only 15, he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia and died Oct. 12, 2006.

“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.”

The attribution of a second miracle means the boy can now be elevated to sainthood, but the Vatican did not say when this would happen.

The Roman Catholic Church teaches that only God performs miracles, but that saints who are believed to be with God in heaven intercede on behalf of people who pray to them.

Typically, miracles are the medically inexplicable healing of a person.

[source:sky]