In 2006, Carlo Acutis, died of leukemia at just 15 years.  As of 2024, he has officially become the Catholic Church’s first millennial saint. 

From a young age, Acutis would donate his pocket money to the needy, serve meals in soup kitchens, and offer additional support to his struggling classmates. He enjoyed playing the saxophone, soccer, and video games, such as Super Mario and Pokemon. By age seven, Acutis became a devout Catholic after being exposed to the teachings of his Polish nanny, and would attend daily mass at his church. After teaching himself to code in primary school, Acutis went on to create websites for Catholic organizations, including his own website to document miracles. He was most fondly known to successfully spread Roman Catholic teachings and awareness of the Catholic faith.

In Catholicism, people are encouraged to pray to the deceased for the recovery of a loved in request for that deceased person to speak to God on their behalf. If the person being prayed for then goes on to unexpectedly recover, the Vatican can classify such recovery as a miracle. For someone to become a saint, they must have at least two miracles attributed to them.

Acutis’s first miracle was attributed to him after a priest prayed to him on behalf of a seven-year-old boy from Brazil, who unexpectedly recovered from a rare pancreatic disorder which prevented him from eating normally. He was then accredited for a second miracle after a mother prayed to him on behalf of her twenty-one-year-old daughter, who was in critical condition after undergoing an emergency craniotomy to reduce pressure on her brain. On the same day of her surgery, the patient was able to breathe without a ventilator, and had gained back full function of her body before being discharged ten days later.

Acutis has become the first of his generation to be classified as a saint, as the most recent birth date of a saint was previously 1926.