Blessed Carlo Acutis – the Italian youth known as “God’s influencer” – will be canonised on September 7, the Vatican has announced.
He will be recognised a saint jointly with Pier Giorgio Frassati, a fellow Italian who also died at a young age.
The pair will be among nine canonisations to take place this year following Pope Leo XIV’s first Ordinary Public Consistory of his pontificate this morning.
Both canonisations were previously announced in November but had been delayed by the death of Pope Francis.
The canonisation of Blessed Carlo, who was beatified in Assisi on 10 October 2020, had originally been scheduled for April 27, the Second Sunday of Easter, to coincide with the Jubilee of Teenagers, while Blessed Pier Giorgio’s canonisation had been set for August 3, the culmination of the Jubilee for Youth.
The postponement of Blessed Carlo’s canonisation was announced on the day of Pope Francis’ death, 21 April, and it was widely assumed that Blessed Pier Giorgio’s canonisation would similarly be delayed.
During the consistory, Pope Leo also set the date for the canonisation of martyred Armenian Catholic Archbishop Ignatius Shoukrallah Maloyan, who died in 1915 during the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire; and Peter To Rot, a lay catechist who was martyred in 1945 for continuing his apostolate despite the ban imposed by the Japanese. Blessed Peter will be the first canonised saint from Papua New Guinea.
Three female religious are also among those who will be canonised in October: Vincenza Maria Poloni, founder of the Institute of the Sisters of Mercy of Verona; Maria del Monte Carmelo Rendiles (née Carmen Elena Rendiles Martínez), from Venezuela, founder of the Congregation of the Servants of Jesus; and Maria Troncatti, a professed religious of the Daughters of Mary, Help of Christians.
Finally, two other laymen will be recognised as saints: Bartolo Longo, founder of the famous Marian Shrine at Pompeii, and José Gregorio Hernández Cisneros, a Venezuelan doctor and member of the Secular Franciscan Order, known as “the doctor of the poor” because he treated those in need and even paid for their medicines.
Blessed Carlo was born in London in 1991 and moved to Italy with his parents when he was three months old.
He was known for his devotion to Eucharistic miracles and Marian apparitions, which he catalogued on a website he designed, earning him the nickname “God’s influencer”.
He developed untreatable leukaemia and died in Monza, Italy, in 2006 at the age of 15 and has since been mooted as a possible patron saint of the internet.
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