British teenager set to be made first millennial saint’

The new Pope may soon canonise Carlo Acutis, a tech-savvy youngster who died in 2006, and so usher in a new era of religion to halt a decline in worship,

- Peter Stanford

Saint-making in the Catholic Church – or canonisation as it is called – is traditionally a drawn-out, opaque process with the successful candidates who have emerged from it in recent times usually worthy but unsurprising long-dead clerics and nuns.

That is why Carlo Acutis joining their heavenly ranks has caught the attention of so many.

London-born, raised in Italy, this tech-savvy, deeply devout teenager tragically died aged just 15 from leukaemia in 2006. Pope Francis’s decision in 2024 to approve his canonisation saw him labelled “the first millennial saint”.

As with many of the late Pope’s bold, breaking-with-precedent decisions, this one appeared to be based, in part at least, on a realisation that the Church feels alien and irrelevant to many young people because of its outdated stance on sex before marriage, women’s equality and same-sex relationships.

Holding up Acutis as a role model – which is part of their job description – is therefore showing a sceptical young audience that Catholicism isn’t only for the old and the conservative. If in doubt of the symbolic power of Carlos Acutis, take a look at the stained-glass window featuring him that was installed in 2022 in St Aldhelm’s Catholic Church in Malmesbury.

Unlike the medieval bishop in vestments and carrying a crozier in the window next door, he is depicted dressed in standard 2006 teenager garb, with a digital watch and a phone strapped to his rucksack. In other words: very ordinary, very now, yet simultaneously the Church has decided through its canonisation process someone extraordinary by dint of his religious devotion and his “heroic virtue” in living his short life as “a servant of God”.