Pope Francis paved the way for the canonization of the first saint of the millennial generation on Thursday, attributing a second miracle to a 15-year-old Italian computer whiz who died of leukemia in 2006.
Carlo Acutis, born on May 3, 1991, in London and then moved with his Italian parents to Milan as a child, was the youngest contemporary person to be beatified by Francis in Assisi in 2020.
Acutis, who died of acute leukemia on Oct. 12, 2006, was put on the road to sainthood after Pope Francis approved the first miracle attributed to him: The healing of a 7-year-old Brazilian boy from a rare pancreatic disorder after coming into contact with an Acutis’ relic, a piece of one of his T-shirts.
According to Vatican News, the second miracle recognized on Thursday is related to a woman from Costa Rica, who in July 2022 made a pilgrimage to Acutis’ tomb in Assisi to pray for the healing of her daughter, who had suffered severe head trauma after falling from her bicycle. The young woman started showing signs of recovery immediately after her mother’s plea.
so the vatican has all of this kids clothes preserved as relics and they cut off pieces of his t-shirts so they can mail them to cancer patients. just imagining like, spongebob, batman, metallica t-shirts being guarded as holy relics in rome for centuries to come.
Okay so I’m all for the idea that you only get declared a saint after death. That makes sense to me. And I’m fine with determining posthumously that things they did were in fact miracles.
What I’m not cool with is the miracles happening posthumously. I feel like you should have to perform the miracles while alive, it has to be a semi-conscious act. You can’t just say “Oh my blindness was healed and it’s because of a random dead Italian kid”