A computer-loving teen as the first millennial saint

HostMost of us think of saints as people from hundreds of years ago who lived in caves or old stone buildings. But there's a teenager from our own time, a kid who loved his PlayStation and learned how to code, who's on his way to being officially named a saint. How does a normal, tech-loving kid from the nineties end up on that path?

GuestIt's a bit of a shift for a lot of people to wrap their heads around. His name was Carlo Acutis. He was born in London in 1991 and grew up in Milan, Italy. If you saw a photo of him, he looks just like any other kid from that era. He's wearing a red track jacket, jeans, and Nike sneakers. He loved movies, he played video games like Halo and Super Mario, and he was really into computers. But the reason the church is so interested in him is what he did with that hobby. He used his self-taught coding skills to build a website that tracked miracles from all over the world. He died very young, at only fifteen, from a very fast-moving cancer of the blood. But in those fifteen years, he left a mark that has led the Pope to say he'll be a saint very soon.

HostI think some people might hear that and feel a bit of a disconnect. Building a website is a great skill, but does that really count as the kind of holy work we usually associate with saints?

GuestWell, that's where the friction usually starts. Some people wonder if he's just a poster boy for the digital age. But for Carlo, the computer wasn't a distraction from his faith. It was a tool. He saw the internet as a place that was full of junk and noise, and he wanted to use his talent to put something good there. He spent years digging through old records to find stories of miracles involving the bread and wine used in church services. He made this huge digital map so anyone could find them. But his life away from the screen was just as important. Even as a young boy, he used his pocket money to buy sleeping bags and hot drinks for the homeless people in Milan. He was known for standing up to bullies at school who picked on kids with disabilities. He lived a very normal life, but he did it with a kind of focus on others that stood out to everyone who knew him.

HostIt still feels like a huge jump from being a kind, tech-savvy kid to being named a saint. Usually, there has to be some kind of proof that goes beyond just being a good person, right?

GuestYou're talking about the miracles. In the Catholic Church, for someone to be named a saint, there usually have to be two specific events where a person is healed in a way that science can't explain after people pray to that specific person for help. For Carlo, the first one happened in 2013. A young boy in Brazil had a very serious problem with his pancreas that meant he couldn't eat and was losing weight fast. His family prayed to Carlo and touched a piece of his clothing. The boy suddenly got better, and his pancreas was completely healed. The doctors couldn't explain how it happened. Then, more recently, there was a girl in Costa Rica who had a terrible bike accident while she was at school in Italy. She had severe brain damage and the doctors said she was likely going to die. Her mother went to the town where Carlo is buried and prayed there. That same day, the girl started breathing on her own, and a few weeks later, she was walking and talking again.

HostThat's a lot to take in. It almost sounds like a story from a book rather than something happening in modern hospitals with modern doctors.

GuestIt does, and that's why the church spends years investigating these cases. They bring in medical experts who aren't even members of the church to see if there's any other possible reason for the healing. They look for any medicine or surgery that could've done it. In these cases, they couldn't find any other answer. But there's also a bigger point here. The church is trying to show that you don't have to be a monk from the Middle Ages to be a saint. You can be a gamer. You can be someone who understands how to write code. Pope Francis has talked about how Carlo shows that holiness is possible even in the world of social media and high-speed internet.

HostThere's something a bit scary about that, though. If a normal kid who plays video games can be a saint, it kind of raises the bar for the rest of us, doesn't it? It makes it feel like we should all be doing more with our time.

GuestMaybe, but Carlo had a way of looking at that which was actually pretty grounding. He had a famous saying that he wrote down. He said that everyone is born as an original, but many people end up dying as mere photocopies of others. He wasn't trying to be a perfect, plastic version of a holy person. He was just being himself. He loved his dog, he loved his friends, and he happened to love God and computers too. When he found out he was dying, he told his mother that he was happy because he hadn't wasted a single minute of his life on things that didn't matter. He saw his life as a gift and he just used his tools, which happened to be computers, to share that.

HostThe boy in the Nike shoes and the track jacket might be the best reminder we have to stay true to that original spark.