In the latest sign of spiritual renewal in the Catholic Church, the announcement came down yesterday that Blessed Carlo Acutis will be canonized.
The fifteen-year-old Italian web designer gained acclaim for his cataloging of eucharistic miracles. Now, Pope Francis has officially recognized a second miracle attributed to Acutis’ intercession, clearing his way to sainthood.
In a decree on May 23, Pope Francis approved the miraculous healing of a 21-year-old girl from Costa Rica named Valeria Valverde who was near death after seriously injuring her head in a bicycle accident while studying in Florence in 2022.
After the girl underwent an emergency craniotomy to reduce intracranial pressure, the family was told that her situation was very critical and that she could die at any moment, according to the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of Saints.
Related: A Eucharistic Miracle
Six days after the accident, Valeria’s mother went on a pilgrimage to Assisi to pray for the healing of her daughter at the tomb of Blessed Carlo Acutis, leaving a written note.
On that same day, Valeria began to breathe on her own and on the following day she recovered the use of her upper limbs and partly recovered her speech.
Valeria was discharged from the intensive care unit 10 days after her mother’s pilgrimage and underwent further tests that showed that the hemorrhagic right temporal cortical contusion in her brain had completely disappeared.
Contrary to medical predictions, Valeria spent only one week in physical therapy and on Sept. 2, 2022, two months after her accident, she went on a pilgrimage to Carlo Acutis’ tomb in Assisi with her mother to celebrate her complete healing.
Born in 1991, Acutis is the first millennial to be beatified by the Catholic Church.
Shortly after his first Communion at the age of 7, Carlo told his mother: “To always be united to Jesus: This is my life plan.” To accomplish this, Carlo sought to attend daily Mass as often as possible at the parish church across the street from his elementary school in Milan.
Carlo called the Eucharist “my highway to heaven,” and he did all in his power to make this presence known. His witness inspired his own parents to return to practicing the Catholic faith and his Hindu au pair to convert and be baptized.
Related: Eucharistic Revival
Editor’s note: Even the Church acknowledges that people born in 1991 ar Millennials.
Carlo was a tech-savvy kid who loved computers, animals, and video games. His spiritual director has recalled that Carlo was convinced that the evidence of Eucharistic miracles could be persuasive in helping people to realize that Jesus is present at every Mass.
St. Carlo is said to have loved PokĂ©mon. Going by his age, it’s a good bet he played PokĂ©mon Gold and Silver. Which would mean his copy of the Game Boy cart pictured above is now a second-class relic.
It is the Holy Gold Pokémon.
And there might be another gaming-related sign that may have predicted the coming of St. Carlo Acutis.
Nintendo Power vol. 83, dated April, 1996, featured coverage of Earthworm Jim 2 for the SNES.
A sidebar in that issue featured the following humorous quiz answer:
Yes, the answer is a play on the British name for a buttered french fry sandwich. Yet that doesn’t rule out potential truth contained in the joke.
Because Carlo is Italian for Charles, and many gamers are already acclaiming Carlo Acutis as their patron. So it does look like Nintendo Power unwittingly but correctly stated 28 years ago that there is a patron saint of video games. And they were not erroneous in calling him St. Charles.
Best timeline confirmed.
Carlo died at the age of 15 in 2006 shortly after being diagnosed with leukemia. Before he died, Carlo told his mother: “I offer all of my suffering to the Lord for the pope and for the Church in order not to go to purgatory but to go straight to heaven.”
See more on Bl. Carlo Acutis here:
Sancte Carole, ora pro nobis!
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Worldlines must still be being shifted by CERN. Because I come from a worldline where this guy was canonized years ago already, like 2014, and has a stained glass window dressed as Ash Ketchem.
Next year, my friend!
He was beatified some time ago, and they’ve had relics of him around for years, already.
So very awesome.