St. Carlo Acutis
He taught himself to code and spent it cataloguing miracles. He was fifteen.
Carlo was a normal Milanese teenager in the early 2000s. He played Halo and Pokémon, capped himself at one hour of video games a week because he decided he should, filmed his dogs, and was the kid who noticed when someone was being left out at school.
He also taught himself programming out of university textbooks, and he used it to build a website: a catalogue of every reported Eucharistic miracle in the world, country by country, with photographs and sources. It took him years. The exhibition made from it has since traveled to thousands of parishes on every continent.
He was diagnosed with leukemia at fifteen and died within days of the diagnosis. He offered his suffering for the Pope and asked to be buried in Assisi because he loved Francis. He was canonized in 2025, the first millennial saint.
St. Carlo Acutis facts for kids
- Born 1991, died 2006. The first saint who grew up with the internet.
- He limited himself to one hour of video games per week
- His Eucharistic miracles website is still online and the exhibit has toured the world
- He's buried in Assisi in jeans and sneakers
Feast day: October 12 · Patron of young people and the internet
Canonized in 2025. Too recent for most published calendars.
St. Carlo, help me use the things I'm good at for something that matters.
The longer story
We wrote a whole post about St. Carlo, with more of the story than fits on one page.
St. Carlo Acutis: The Saint in Sneakers