September 2, 2025 // National

Ordinary Models of Extraordinary Holiness

OSV NEWS

At His First Canonization, Pope Leo XIV to Recognize Sainthood of Carlo Acutis, Pier Giorgio Frassati

Acutis’ Zeal for the Faith Can Inspire Young and Old

BY MEG HUNTER-KILMER

Blessed Carlo Acutis had a PlayStation. He made awkward videos with his friends. His favorite cartoon was “Pokémon.” And on Sunday, September 7, he will be officially canonized as the first millennial saint.

In February of 2020, the pope formally recognized a miracle attributed to Acutis’ intercession, and in October that year, the teen was beatified during a Mass at the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi. In May of 2024, Pope Francis recognized a second miracle, paving the way for his canonization. That miracle involved a young Costa Rican woman who from her bicycle on July 2, 2022, and suffered a serious head injury. Even after emergency surgery removing part of her skull to reduce severe intracranial pressure, doctors warned her family she could die at any moment. An associate of the young woman’s mother began praying to Blessed Carlo the same day, and the mother went to Assisi and prayed at his tomb on July 8 – the same day the young woman began to breathe on her own again. She slowly recovered basic mobility, and a CT scan showed the hemorrhage was gone.

Acutis’ mother, Antonia, doesn’t know how he came to love Jesus. He’d been baptized as a baby, but the family didn’t practice the faith. Perhaps it was their Polish nanny who told Carlo about Jesus. Regardless of the source, Carlo had a deep love for Jesus even as a preschooler, asking his bemused mother if they could stop in to see Jesus when they walked past churches in their Milan neighborhood – and even insisting on taking flowers to place at the feet of the Blessed Mother.

Antonia wasn’t sure what to do with this piety in her young son, and she wasn’t prepared to answer his many questions. But as he asked, she began to wonder as well. His curiosity eventually prompted her to take theology classes; beyond just being back at Mass, Antonia was diving into her faith, and all because of Carlo. “He was like a little savior for me,” she said in an interview published on the website Aleteia.

Carlo’s longing for the Eucharist drove him to ask permission to receive earlier than was customary. At 7, Carlo received his first Communion and never missed Mass again. Not just Sunday Mass, either. Every day of his life, Carlo went to Mass. Every day, he stole a few minutes to pray in silence before the tabernacle. And while his parents sometimes went with him, Carlo often went alone. When they traveled, Carlo’s first order of business was to find a church and figure out Mass times. Whether or not his parents joined him, Carlo would be there. Every day.

And they traveled quite a bit. Carlo’s deep love of Mary (whom he called “the only woman in my life”) led the family to Marian apparition sites throughout Europe. But their pilgrimages became more intentional when Carlo was 11 and got an idea.

After receiving his first Communion, Carlo had begun to lament the many people who don’t go to Mass. “They’ll stand in line for hours to go to a concert,” he would say, “but won’t stay even a moment before the tabernacle.” Eager to do something to draw souls to Jesus, young Carlo began to research Eucharistic miracles. He was convinced that people wouldn’t be able to stay away from the holy Mass if they knew about the miracles of Lanciano and Poznan and the dozens of others recognized by the Church. So, Carlo began to research, dragging his parents from one shrine to another in order to take pictures for the website he was building.

This was only 2002, but Carlo was something of a prodigy when it came to technology. When he was only 8 or 9, he had gotten a hold of a university-level computer science textbook, using it to teach himself to code. From there, he moved into animation and video editing, making videos with his friends and dubbing voice-overs on videos of his dogs. Carlo had the tech savvy, the information, and the drive – the resulting website documenting nearly 150 miracles eventually developed into an exhibit that has traveled the world.

But Carlo was no computer geek closeted in a back bedroom. For all his technological skill, Carlo was a friendly, outgoing kid. He was so friendly that his family was reluctant to go on walks with him; Carlo knew everybody, it seemed, and he couldn’t help but stop to talk to every person he passed. He had a sensitive heart and was always looking out for those who were suffering: classmates whose parents were going through a divorce, kids who were being bullied.

Carlo’s approach was always friendship. And through that friendship, people were always drawn to Jesus. As pure and as pious as he was, nobody felt judged by the young saint. His uncle says that being with Carlo filled your heart, and that joy left people seeking and wondering, as Carlo’s mother had years before. A young Hindu man who worked for Carlo’s family was baptized as a direct result of his friendship with Carlo, while many others returned to the faith.

Carlo was particularly close to the homeless people in his neighborhood, packing up food most days to take out to his friends on the street. Though his family was wealthy, Carlo had no patience for excess. He saved up his pocket money to buy a sleeping bag for a homeless friend, and when his mother suggested they buy Carlo such “luxuries” as a second pair of shoes, he revolted. Technology, though, wasn’t a luxury. It was an important part of his apostolate, and Carlo had no qualms about using three computers when building his website.

Through all this, every day: Mass, the Rosary, silent time before the tabernacle. Carlo insisted that holiness was impossible otherwise. “The Eucharist is my highway to heaven,” he would say, and nothing could get between him and his daily appointment with the Lord. “The more we receive the Eucharist, the more we will become like Jesus,” Carlo said.

How did he have the time? In between teaching himself to code, playing soccer, riding his bike around Milan to visit the poor, teaching himself the saxophone, patiently explaining technology to his older relatives, and making one movie after another? According to his mother, Carlo didn’t waste time on useless things. He limited himself to an hour a week of video games (because, he said, he didn’t want to become a slave to them) and focused the rest of his time on things that were valuable. But that didn’t exclude silly animations or videos of his dogs – Carlo knew that something doesn’t need to be catechetical to be valuable, and he enjoyed leisure all the more because its greatest value was the simple fact that it was fun.

Carlo hungered for heaven. “We have always been awaited in heaven,” he said, and throughout his life his eyes were fixed on eternity. So when, at 15, he went to the hospital with the flu and was diagnosed instead with an acute and untreatable leukemia, Carlo wasn’t upset. He was ready to go home. “I can die happy,” he told his mother, “because I haven’t wasted even a minute on things that aren’t pleasing to God.”

Within three days, Carlo Acutis was dead.

He was a remarkable young man, but he was also exceptionally ordinary. He had no visions. He didn’t levitate when he prayed. He just lived like heaven was real. He was completely himself, video games and computer programming and all, but entirely Christ’s.

On his website, Carlo wrote a list of instructions for becoming holy, encouraging people to go to Mass daily and confession weekly. But his very first rule for becoming holy was this: “You must want it with all your heart.”

This is the legacy of Venerable Carlo Acutis: an ordinary, modern kid who watched cartoons and used the internet and wanted holiness with all his heart. This is why the world loves him. Because he shows us that holiness is possible. For every one of us. Even if you have an Instagram account. Even if you’re a gamer.

Carlo Acutis was born in 1991. That fact alone is a testimony: Holiness is possible. For you. Right now.

But you have to want it.

This article was first published by Our Sunday Visitor. It is being reprinted with permission.

Meg Hunter-Kilmer is a Catholic author and speaker who lives in South Bend. Her latest book, “Eyes Fixed on Jesus, Vol. 1: A Journey into the Gospels” will be released by OSV on September 15.

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Frassati: ‘Be Holy In the Normalcy of Our Lives’

BY MARIA WIERING

(OSV News) – In a well-circulated photo, Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati appears to pause during a mountain hike and leans against his walking stick, smoking a pipe. His posture is relaxed and confident.

For many, the visual takeaway is that Frassati is someone they could imagine among their friends, a soon-to-be saint somehow like them.

“The No. 1 thing I get with Pier Giorgio is relatability,” said Christine Wohar, FrassatiUSA executive director. “He shows us how we can … be holy in the normalcy of our lives.”

He was attractive, manly, rugged, humorous, and athletic, she noted. He was devoted to the Eucharist and Mary and time spent in adoration and praying the Rosary. He came from a wealthy family but was also committed to personal charity, as well as larger social causes and faith-based activism.

But, Wohar said, he also had relatable challenges: His parents’ marriage was on the verge of legal separation, he struggled to balance his studies with other commitments, he wrestled with whether to date a girl he loved, and he was misunderstood by family members.

Pope Leo XIV plans to canonize the Turin native, who died in 1925, alongside fellow Italian Blessed Carlo Acutis on Sunday, September 7. The date is a month after the one originally indicated – but not solidified – in November of 2024 by the late Pope Francis, who said Frassati would be canonized during the Jubilee of Young People July 28-August 3.

Wohar had planned a group pilgrimage for that celebration, and when the date shifted, it was too difficult to reschedule. So, she and others spent late July and early August visiting Italy’s Frassati-related sites before attending Jubilee events in Rome. There they venerated Frassati’s relics in the Basilica of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, where his body had been temporarily relocated from Turin for the Jubilee celebration.

On that casket was inscribed, in his script, a phrase that many of his devotees have made their personal adage, stacked with spiritual meaning: Verso l’alto (“To the heights”). He wrote the phrase on another photo that had been taken of him mountaineering, gripping a rockface while looking towards the summit. It would be his last climb.

Pier Giorgio Michelangelo Frassati was born on April 6, 1901, in Turin to Adelaide Ametis, a painter, and Alfredo Frassati, a newspaper businessman and politician who served as an Italian senator and ambassador to Germany. Even as a child, Pier Giorgio was engaged in Catholic groups and sought to receive daily Communion.

Fortified by a robust prayer life rooted in Marian devotion and the Eucharist, at age 17 he joined the Society of St. Vincent de Paul to care for the poor and the wounded soldiers returning home from World War I. He was known for giving money and his possessions to people in poverty and even skipped vacations to the family’s summer home, saying, “If everybody leaves Turin, who will take care of the poor?”

His concern for marginalized and downtrodden people would persist throughout his short life. It influenced his decision to study mining engineering at Royal Polytechnic University of Turin, with the aim of ministering among the miners. Although he was smart, his studies suffered because of the amount of time he dedicated to helping the poor and political activism. In 1919, he joined Catholic Action, which promoted the Church’s social teaching, especially as articulated in the 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, promulgated by Pope Leo XIII.

Two years later, he helped to organize in Ravenna the first Pax Romana conference, which aimed to unify Catholic university students to work for worldwide peace. In 1922, he joined the lay Dominicans, also known as the Third Order of St. Dominic, choosing the name “Girolamo” after the fiery 15th-century Dominican preacher in Florence, Girolamo Savonarola.

Throughout his young adulthood, he was an avid outdoorsman and enjoyed skiing and mountaineering, art and music, poetry and theater. He regularly gathered his friends and was known to be a practical joker, shortening his friends’ bedsheets and waking them with trumpet blasts, ultimately earning the nickname “Fracassi,” as in “fracas” – a noisy disturbance.

“He knew how to have fun,” Wohar said. “He was an explosion of joy. He was the life of the party.”

But at church, he was reverent and composed, “all business with the Lord,” she added.

“He made religion look fun and attractive,” Wohar said. “Stories are told about how he would make wagers, and if he won that, his friends would have to go to adoration or Mass or pray the Rosary or something. He believed that the apostolate of persuasion was the most beautiful and most necessary to help your friends find the ways of God.”

Frassati also engaged in actual fistfights for his faith-based political convictions – on more than one occasion – in scuffles with Communists, Fascists, and crowd enforcement during activist rallies.

Amid his studies, social life, and political activism, Frassati continued to take seriously his spiritual life, charitable works, and evangelistic efforts, wasting no opportunity to invite his friends to join him in prayer, Scripture reading, or at Mass.

An often-overlooked aspect of Frassati was the attention he gave daily to death, Wohar said. He committed to making some preparation daily for his own death, saying that he was “ambitious” to meet God, even as his judge.

“He was mindful of his eternal future, and that really shaped how he lived his present,” she said. “He wrote beautiful letters about this. He visited one day somebody who had just died in the hospital, and he said, ‘This is what’s going to happen to me in just a short period of time,’ which was almost prophetic.”

In late June of 1925, Frassati began to experience symptoms of polio, likely contracted while visiting Turin’s sick and poor. However, his grandmother was also dying at his home, so he downplayed his illness and focused on her, as did his family. She died July 3.

As his suffering worsened, his mind was also on his friends and the poor. He implored his sister, Luciana, to deliver medicine and other promised items to those in need whom he regularly visited. She recounted this in her book “My Brother Pier Giorgio: His Last Days.”

Pier Giorgio Frassati died on July 4, 1925, at age 24, and his funeral was attended by hundreds of his city’s poor, revealing to many, especially his family members, the fullness of his charity. He was initially buried in the family crypt in the nearby city of Pollone, but his body was moved to the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin after his beatification in 1990.

At Frassati’s beatification, Pope St. John Paul II described him as a “man of the beatitudes.”

“In him, faith and daily events are harmoniously fused, so that adherence to the Gospel is translated into loving care for the poor and the needy in a continual crescendo until the very last days of the sickness which led to his death,” the pope said.

“His love for beauty and art, his passion for sports and mountains, his attention to society’s problems did not inhibit his constant relationship with the Absolute,” he continued. “Entirely immersed in the mystery of God and totally dedicated to the constant service of his neighbor: thus we can sum up his earthly life!”

While a cause for Frassati’s canonization began shortly after his death, it stalled for a time. Wohar said she believes that his canonization this year – a century after his death – is part of God’s plan.

“The Lord, in his wisdom, knew we needed a Pier Giorgio Frassati, a St. Frassati, for a time like we live in now,” she said.

“If he had been canonized, say, in the 1940s, we might never even have him on our radar,” she continued. “He would have maybe gone into obscurity as one of the many, many, many Italian saints. The fact that he is being canonized in this Jubilee Year of Hope, when we need hope in our culture, I think he presents a picture of hope for young adults – for everybody, but particularly for that age range.”

She added, “It’s God’s perfect timing.”