THE CANONISATION OF Italian teenager Carlo Acutis, the Catholic Church’s first millennial saint, will take place in September.

The London-born Italian teenager died from leukaemia in 2006 at the age of 15.

He had been due to be canonised on 27 April during the Jubilee of Teenagers – part of the overall Jubilee Year of the Church –but this was postponed after Pope Francis’s death.

The late pope died on 21 April and was buried on 26 April.

Pope Leo XIV met with Cardinals at the Vatican this morning and gave his formal approval for the canonisations of eight people, including Acutis.

Pope Leo announced that Acutis and Pier Giorgio Frassati will be canonised together on 7 September.

Frassati was an anti-fascist mountain-climber who died aged just 24.

And while Acutis’s original canonisation date of 27 April was postponed, it nevertheless ended up being a day of celebration for the Italian teenager.

What was meant to be the first official day of mourning for Francis on 27 April instead became a celebration of Carlo, with the streets of Rome a sea of teenagers wearing caps and t-shirts bearing his image.

Acutis’s miracles

When a miracle is attributed to someone after their death, they receive the title ‘Blessed’ by the Catholic Church.

A second posthumous miracle then needs to be attributed to this person in order for them to be considered for Sainthood.

Last May, Francis formally recognised a second posthumous miracle attributed to Acutis, paving the way for him to become a saint.

Francis formally recognised the first miracle attributed to Acutis in 2020 and this was the healing of a Brazilian child who was born with a pancreatic defect that made eating difficult.

This miracle is said to have occurred after the Brazilian child came into contact with one of Acutis’s t-shirts.

After the recognition of this first miracle, Acutis was beatified and received the title of ‘Blessed’ and began to be venerated by some within the Church. 

The second miracle, formally recognised last May, involved the healing of a 21-year-old woman from Costa Rica named Valeria Valverde.

In 2022, she was involved in a bicycle accident and suffered a severe head injury while studying in Florence, Italy.

Valverde then had emergency surgery to reduce pressure on her brain, but her family were told that the situation was critical, and that Valverde may not survive.

Her mother is said to have gone on a pilgrimage to the tomb of Acutis in the Italian town of Assisi, where the teenager is buried in jeans, a tracksuit top, and Nike shoes.

According to the Church, on the same day that Valverde’s mother went to pray at the tomb of Acutis, Valverde began to breathe on her own and the following day she was able to move her arms and speak.

She was able to leave the intensive care unit ten days later and it is reported that Valverde has made a full recovery, needing only a week of physiotherapy after leaving hospital.

The Catholic Church defines a miracle as a “sign or wonder such as a healing, or control of nature, which can only be attributed to divine power”.

For something to be formally recognised by the Church as a miracle, two-thirds of a medical board consisting of at least six doctors are required to sign a statement affirming that the supposed miraculous event cannot be explained by natural causes.

The miraculous recovery must also be a complete, spontaneous, immediate healing from a documented medical condition.

Acutis, who died in Monza, Italy, has been dubbed “the patron saint of the internet” and “God’s influencer”.

He was interested in computer science and made a website dedicated to Eucharistic miracles.

When Acutis was first declared ‘Blessed’ by the Church in 2020, Pope Francis remarked that it “demonstrated that holiness is attainable even in our modern world.”