Tech whiz is first millennial saint; 2nd Italian also canonized

Pope Leo XIV on Sunday declared a 15-year-old computer whiz the Roman Catholic Church's first millennial saint, giving the next generation of Catholics a relatable role model who used technology to spread the faith and earn the nickname “God's influencer.”

- BY NICOLE WINFIELD

FRANCO ORIGLIA Getty Images CATHOLICS attend the canonization of tech whiz Carlo Acutis and Pier Giorgio Frassati at the Vatican.

Leo canonized Carlo Acutis, who died in 2006, during an open-air Mass in St. Peter’s Square before an estimated 80,000 people, many of them millennials and couples with young children. During the first saint-making Mass of his pontificate, Leo also canonized another popular Italian figure who died young, Pier Giorgio Frassati.

Frassati died in 1925 at age 24 of polio. Born into a prominent Turin family, he is known for his devotion to serving the poor and carrying out acts of charity while spreading his faith to his friends.

Leo said both men created “masterpieces” out of their lives by dedicating them to God.

"The greatest risk in life is to waste it outside of God's plan," Leo said in his homily. The new saints "are an invitation to all of us, especially young people, not to squander our lives, but to direct them upwards and make them masterpieces."

An ordinary life

Acutis was born on May 3, 1991, in London to a wealthy but not particularly observant Catholic family. They moved to Milan, Italy, soon after he was born, and he is said to have enjoyed a happy, typical childhood, albeit marked by increasingly intense religious devotion.