Assisi, the medieval Italian town revered because the home of Saints Francis and Clare, is experiencing a latest wave of pilgrim fervour.
The focus of this burgeoning devotion? Carlo Acutis, a millennial teenager set to be canonised on April 27.
For many young pilgrims, Carlo, who was born in London, offers a relatable path to holiness.
“St. Francis, St. Clare, after all, necessary saints who marked an epoch – but that’s far faraway from today’s teens,” observed Maria Rosario Riccio, chaperoning a youth group from southern Italy.
“Carlo is like the youngsters. He’s a near-saint of our time, who can show teens that it’s possible to like Jesus while being a daily youth.”
Ms Riccio’s group, together with lots of of others, visited the Santuario della Spogliazione (also often known as Santa Maria Maggiore), the very spot where St. Francis renounced his worldly possessions centuries ago. Inside, they prayed at Carlo’s tomb, where his body, clad in jeans, a sweatshirt, and sneakers, lies on view.
The scene reflected a various array of holiday makers, from priests and nuns to families with teenagers, all drawn to the young man who died of leukaemia in 2006 on the age of 15.
The outpouring of devotion has surprised even Assisi’s bishop, the Rev. Domenico Sorrentino. He described the scene as a “volcano of grace erupting”, noting the stark contrast to the relative obscurity of the Santuario della Spogliazione just twenty years prior.
What was once a “forgotten” church next to his residence is now a vibrant center of pilgrimage, due to the inspiring story of Carlo.
Over the last 12 months, greater than one million pilgrims paid homage to the teenager, Rev. Sorrentino said, drawn by “his smiling way of life our faith”.
Carlo’s joyful image, often in a red polo shirt and carrying a backpack, is as popular in souvenir shops across town as Francis in his easy brown habit.
One store owner picked up a blessed icon the primary time she went to the shrine and keeps it glued to her money register.
“I used to be really interested by this latest saint who attracts youth,” Silvia Balducci said.
Both the church and his family describe Carlo as an exceptionally devout but otherwise regular Italian boy, who’s working miracles after his premature death precisely by drawing youth to faith when most of his contemporaries are abandoning organised religion.
“Carlo wasn’t an alien, he was a standard person. But if it’s illuminated by the sunshine of Christ, a life becomes extraordinary,” his mother, Antonia Salzano Acutis, said.
“We all the time pray to the saints, and in the long run, what did saints do? They opened the doors of their lives to Christ.”
She quoted one in every of her son’s favorite phrases: “Everyone is born an original, but many die photocopies.
“The saint is one who didn’t die like a photocopy, who realised that project of holiness that God established in eternity for every of us, as all of us should,” she said.
Not an observant Catholic herself when she had him, Ms Acutis used to joke along with her husband that their young son was “somewhat Buddha” due to his unselfishness, attention to others, and cheerful obedience.
He developed a precocious interest in faith, comparable to wanting to enter every church to “say hi” to Jesus and Mary. Later, he began attending Mass, adoring the Blessed Sacrament and praying the rosary each day – while also entertaining with jokes his friends who were less fascinated with religion and more into going to nightclubs with their girlfriends and smoking an occasional joint.
“This was a little bit of a way of hiding his faith life, because Carlo knew that his friends couldn’t understand,” his mother said. “But Carlo was a witness, a silent witness through the worth of friendship, through the worth of generosity, helping his classmates at school, defending the teenagers who were bullied.”
Carlo often helped the homeless and was tired of the trimmings common for a wealthy child in Milan, one in every of Europe’s fashion and business capitals. He asked his parents to donate to the poor what they might have spent for a second pair of sneakers for him, and insisted he desired to teach catechism at his parish as a substitute of happening skiing holidays at fancy resorts like his peers.
That denial of privilege is a parallel with St. Francis, to whom Carlo was so devoted that he asked to be buried in Assisi, said the Rev. Enzo Fortunato, who spent most of his religious profession there and heads the pontifical committee for World Children’s Day.
“And there are more similarities with St. Francis. St. Francis left the churches and went to the squares to evangelise. Carlo Acutis prophetically realised that today the general public squares are online, on the Web,” Rev. Fortunato said. “That’s where youth are, that’s where individuals are, so he lives and brings the Gospel in those squares. That’s one in every of the the explanation why he’ll develop into the patron of the net, Internet and social media.”
Particularly devout to the eucharist and wanting to share the Catholic belief that Jesus is literally present in it, Carlo created a web based exhibit about miracles where the bread and wine became flesh and blood throughout the centuries. It’s been utilized in 1000’s of parishes worldwide, his mother said.
For her, his being “a bridge to Jesus” — even in his terminal illness, which he faced without complaining, certain of everlasting life — is a more necessary legacy than any miracles or supernatural signs.
To develop into a saint, nonetheless, miracles do have to be attested. One in Carlo’s canonisation process was the healing of a Costa Rican student from a bicycle accident in Italy after her mother prayed to him, Rev. Sorrentino said.
Sabina Falcetta goes often to Carlo’s shrine from the nearby city of Perugia with a gaggle of fellow moms to wish for his or her children.
“Carlo Acutis gives us peace,” she said. “Most importantly he gives us the understanding that God is father. And you may’t ask for more.”
As she talked outside the sanctuary, a Confirmation group from Lake Garda in northern Italy was praying in a circle by a cutout of Carlo in his jeans and backpack standing by a larger-than-life monstrance.
One of the catechists, Veronica Abraham, said she had been teaching about each St. Francis and Carlo, specializing in the teenager’s charity and his custom of sitting all the way down to chat with anyone who looked lonely, “since even a ciao is essential for many who are alone”.
Her son Mario Girardi, 13, said he was really struck by the indisputable fact that Acutis – when only a few years older than him – “spoke with everyone, didn’t let anything hassle him but helped everyone”.
