Carlo Acutis Declared First Millennial Saint at Vatican Mass

Pope Leo XIV on Sunday declared Carlo Acutis, a Britishborn Italian teenager who died of leukemia in 2006, the Catholic Church's first millennial saint in a public canonization Mass at St. Peter's Square in the Vatican. The ceremony also elevated Pier Giorgio Frassati, a young Italian activist who died in 1925, and was attended by thousands of pilgrims; estimates of the crowd size ranged from tens of thousands to about 80,000, according to different accounts.

Acutis, born in London in 1991 and raised in Milan, was 15 when he died. Known for teaching himself coding and building websites to promote devotion to the Eucharist, he earned the informal nickname "God's influencer." The Vatican and Acutis supporters say his principal digital legacy was a multilingual website that cataloged more than 100 Eucharistic miracles recognized by the Church. Acutis is also remembered for daily Mass attendance, outreach to homeless people, and teaching catechism in his parish, his mother and others have said.

The path to sainthood for Acutis moved rapidly by modern standards. He was declared venerable in 2018 and beatified in 2020 after the Vatican attributed a medically inexplicable recovery in...