Carlo Acutis: Becoming a saint in everyday life

A completely normal teenager

There he sits in front of his computer, wearing tracksuit trousers, hoodie and trainers. His
tomcat snoozes beside him. Carlo Acutis is a completely normal teenager: he loves computers, football and pizza. But he loves the One who gives life even more.

Carlo has just turned eleven and is already a passionate digital missionary. The Internet has millions of consumers, but Carlo actively helps to shape it: he programs websites, collects facts about Eucharistic miracles and places them online. He can barely ensure the fact that so many people are unaware that God is in our midst. The Internet is for Carlo a gift from God and a tool for spreading the Gospel. And God does indeed frequently perform His wondrous deeds where no-one would expect them, far away from superficial glamour and show. For holiness is not something that stands aloof. It is something intimately human and begins in the midst of our everyday lives. As his mother recalls in an interview, “Carlo was a silent hero because he made God visible in our everyday lives”.

Carlo was just like us: he hung out with his friends on his playstation, had completely normal hobbies and he had questions and problems just like any other teenager. He wasn’t without his faults, doubts and struggles. But he knew where the source of all life is.

Read “What is Holiness, and can I become holy, too?”

Carlo and the greatest miracle on Earth

Carlo Acutis was born in London in 1991 but grew up in Madrid. His family was affluent but had little interest in the faith. He was already fascinated by the Eucharist as a little boy. He made his First Holy Communion at the age of seven and never missed a Holy Mass since. Why is this? Because he knew that in the Eucharist he encounters Jesus Himself. “When we expose ourselves to the sun, we become brown … but when we stand before Jesus in the Eucharist, we become holy.”

He couldn’t understand why people would queue for hours to attend a rock concert but there were hardly any queues in front of the church. He said: “Jesus reveals Himself just as truly in the Eucharist as He did 2,000 years ago when the apostles were alive. But people back then had to make long journeys in order to see Him. We’re better off today because we can find Him in every church.”

Carlo firmly believed that the greatest miracle on Earth was the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.

Learn more about the Eucharist!

Seek God and everything else will be given to you!

Those who put God first will not become unworldly. On the contrary, they will surpass themselves and draw others along with them.

Carlo showed his friends how beautiful and unique a life with God can be. He realised that it is only in communion with the Creator that we can really become ourselves – just as God intended us. For holiness means becoming more and more the person that we are in God’s eyes.

In his Apostolic Exhortation Christus Vivit, the late Pope Francis quotes Blessed Carlo Acutis: “Everyone is born as an original, but many people end up dying as photocopies”, adding, “Don’t let it happen to you”.

What you can learn from Carlo

Listen to the voice within you – perhaps you can hear Carlo saying: “There is a joy that no match, no success, no like can give you. You don’t have to be perfect. You just need to be prepared to love Jesus – and to turn the ordinary into something extraordinary.”

Carlo Acutis died on 12 October 2006. The Church already beatified him in 2020. It was as if it wished to say that holiness is not some far-off ideal. It is possible. Even today. Even for you.

If Carlo has done it, so can you! Blessed Carlo, pray for us!

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