Teen one step from becoming first millennial saint

Vatican City

A British-born Italian teenager who dedicated his short life to spreading the faith online and helping the poor was beatified by the Catholic Church yesterday. That leaves him just one miracle away from becoming the world’s first millennial saint. Internet and computer-mad youngster Carlo Acutis, who died of leukaemia in 2006 aged 15, was placed on the path to sainthood after the Vatican ruled he had miraculously saved another boy’s life.

The Vatican claims he interceded from heaven in 2013 to cure a Brazilian boy suffering from a rare pancreatic disease. He was beatified in Assisi, the home of his idol Saint Francis, who dedicated his life to the poor. Some 3,000 people are expected to follow the ceremony on giant screens set up in five squares in the central Italian city. Acutis, dubbed “the cyberapostle of the Eucharist”, was born in London to Italian parents, and moved to Milan with them as a young boy.

“He was considered a computer genius... But what did he do? He didn’t use these media to chat, have fun,” his mother Antonia Salzano said in an interview with Vatican News. Instead, “his zeal for the Lord” drove him to make a website on miracles, she said.