GOD'S INFLUENCER

After Carlo Acutis died at age 15, he was credited with performing miracles. Now the Italian is about to be canonised as the Catholic Church's first millennial saint. But what did the seemingly ordinary teenager do that was so special?

- MICK BROWN

UNLESS you’ve looked at a picture to prepare yourself, at first sight the tomb of the Blessed Carlo Acutis, which stands in the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore in the Italian hill town of Assisi, would strike you as distinctly unusual, perhaps a little unsettling.

There, in a glass-sided tomb, lies the body of a teenage boy wearing jeans, a track top and a pair of Nike trainers, a rosary clutched in his hands. The way the body is presented, it seems as if he’s floating.

His face, fixed in an expression of benign repose, is actually a silicone mask. It looks uncannily real, as though he’s not dead, but simply sleeping.

Beside the tomb is a photograph of a smiling Carlo, the ordinary teenager, very much alive, dressed in jeans and with a rucksack on his shoulder.

Carlo, who died in 2006 at the age of 15 from leukaemia, has been popularly referred to as God’s influencer and the first millennial saint.

For someone to be recognised as a saint, there must be two miracles attributable to his or her intercession. In the case of Carlo, these came in the form of the healing of a four-year-old boy in Brazil, and a 21-year-old woman from Costa Rica. Both miracles have been “approved” by the Vatican.

The final step to him becoming Saint Carlo will be the Canonization Mass, which will likely take place next year when hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world are expected to descend on Rome and St Peter’s Square.

“I would say, at this time, he’s probably the most popular saint in the world,” says Monsignor Anthony Figueiredo, as we stand in the square outside the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore. “It’s a big statement, but I see it, I know it.”