‘God’s Influencer,’ 15, Set to Become First Millennial Saint After Pope Francis Recognizes Second Miracle

A teenager who died at age 15 is set to become the first millennial saint.

On Thursday, May 23, Pope Francis met with Marcello Semeraro, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, and attributed a second miracle to the late Carlo Acutis, per the Vatican News.

Acutis — who has been called “God’s influencer” — was born in London, England on May 3, 1991, and died from leukemia on Oct. 12, 2006 in Monza, Italy.

His body currently lies on display in an open tomb in Assisi, Italy, where the teen is dressed in his favorite outfit of blue jeans and black Nike sneakers.

If he’s canonized, Acutis will become the first person born in the early 1980s to late 1990s to achieve sainthood, the BBC reported — although the outlet added that it’s not yet known when this may happen.

Pope Francis already beatified Acutis in 2020. This process is a recognition accorded by the Catholic Church of a deceased person’s entrance into Heaven and their capacity to intercede on behalf of individuals who pray in their name.

The late teenager — who was a web designer and documented Eucharistic miracles — was attributed with his first miracle for healing a young Brazilian boy from annular pancreas, which is a rare congenital disease, per online Catholic news site Aleteia.

According to the Vatican News, the second miracle relates to a woman named Liliana from Costa Rica whose daughter Valeria was left with severe head trauma and multiple other injuries after falling from her bicycle in Florence, where she was a university student, on July 2, 2022.

The website stated doctors had said she had a low chance of survival before Liliana’s secretary started praying to Acutis. On July 8 that year, Liliana traveled to Acutis’ tomb in Assisi and that same day, her daughter began to “breathe spontaneously.”

After partially regaining her speech and beginning to move again, a scan then showed her hemorrhage had disappeared on July 18. By Sept. 2, Valeria was able to make the pilgrimage to Acutis’ tomb with her mother to thank him.

“Many Catholics around the world are overjoyed at the news that Carlo Acutis will be declared a saint,” Courtney Mares, author of the 2023 book Blessed Carlo Acutis: A Saint in Sneakers, told Fox News Digital. 

“Carlo will become the first millennial saint in the Catholic Church. The computer-programming Italian teen is beloved by many for his joyful witness to holiness in our digital age,” Mares added to the outlet.

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Acutis’ tomb is located in Assisi’s Sanctuary of Spoliation. “For the first time in history we will see a saint dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a sweater,” the rector said, per the Church of the Little Flower Parish website. “This is a great message for us, we can feel holiness not as a distant thing but as something very much within everyone’s reach because the Lord is the Lord of everyone.”

Archbishop Domenico Sorrentino of Assisi added, according to the outlet, that Acutis linked to via his own site, “Carlo is a boy of our time. A boy of the internet age, and a model of holiness of the digital age.”