The Catholic Church has raised thousands of people to sainthood. To bring these saints to the present day, the Church’s leadership incorporated them into paintings, sculptures, and other forms of art. However, the answer to the question of how many of these faces, created by world-renowned painters and artists, show joy, smiles, or even a hint of a smile, is not a happy one. This is because they are often filled with enigmatic, mystical expressions, burdened with sorrow and the marks of persecution.
However, the faces of saints created by Generation Z using artificial intelligence are filled with joy, with their feet dancing and their tongues singing lively songs. The Christ they envision has a smiling face, the liveliness of a DJ, and performs stunts on a Kawasaki Ninja. He dances with couples at weddings and sings rap songs on the beach.
- “While this new world embraces different things, transcending traditional notions of spirituality, the name ‘Saint Carlo Acutis,’ which echoed in St. Peter’s Square on September 7th, is the answer to the question of how the Church will communicate with the children of this age.”
- “Both the former saint, Francis, who passed away naked, and the contemporary millennial saint, Carlo, who wears jeans and trainers, are loudly proclaiming that spirituality isn’t measured by clothing, external appearances, colour, or lineage.”
- “In the new ‘agoras’ of the digital world, where there are many possibilities of going astray and where weeds of temptation, hypocrisy, and crime grow, the weapon a 15-year-old boy picked up to clear the paths Christ walked is ‘miracle websites’.”
While this new world embraces different things, transcending traditional notions of spirituality, the name “Saint Carlo Acutis,” which echoed in St. Peter’s Square on September 7th, is the answer to the question of how the Church will communicate with the children of this age. There was a time when television was called a ‘silly box’ and the internet a ‘devil’s tool,’ and people were taught to keep them out of their homes. It was the Church itself that opened new windows of correction and light over these things.
Popes welcomed the digital revolution with open arms. Pope John Paul II described the internet, which was previously feared, criticised, and tethered outside the home as the ‘devil’s gateway,’ as a place of immense potential for evangelisation. Pope Benedict gave birth to a new term, the ‘digital continent,’ marking it as a great space for communicating the Church’s message. Pope Francis gave the internet the elevated recognition of being a “gift from heaven”.
While practicing essential hospitality, the Church continues to provide guidance and instructions, deploying wisdom as a weapon in dangerous places and taking cautious and careful steps to protect the souls of the flock. In the next phase of the Church’s digital journey, the one who will stand at the forefront, wearing armour and a shield, is the 15-year-old Saint Carlo Acutis.
Carlo, a 15-year-old, lies with his eyes closed in a small church tomb next to the holy ground of Assisi where Saint Francis once stood naked, giving up his clothes. It’s a powerful story that a young saint of a new era is resting in the same place where a man once stood naked to speak loudly about the spirituality of poverty, in the midst of a time when extravagance was a great sin. This new saint is wearing jeans, sports shoes, and a T-shirt.
Jeans, dancing, music, and love—once considered “wrong and sinful”—are now becoming symbols of saints. This is a beautiful sign that the Church has moved from the boundaries of spirituality to its essence. Both the former saint, Francis, who passed away naked, and the contemporary millennial saint, Carlo, who wears jeans and trainers, are loudly proclaiming that spirituality isn’t measured by clothing, external appearances, colour, or lineage.
In the new ‘agoras’ of the digital world, where there are many possibilities of going astray and where weeds of temptation, hypocrisy, and crime grow, the weapon a 15-year-old boy picked up to clear the paths Christ walked is ‘miracle websites’. Through the website that Saint Carlo Acutis created to document Eucharistic miracles around the world, young and old alike have witnessed over 150 Eucharistic miracles, organised by country and date in about 20 languages.
Presiding over the Mass and canonization of Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis in Saint Peter’s Square on 7 September, Pope Leo XIV said Daily Mass, prayer, and especially Eucharistic Adoration, marked the lives of Saints Pier Giorgio and Carlo in cultivating their love for God and neighbor through simple acts of charity. And even as illness struck both of them, cutting their lives short, they continued to bear witness to hope and offer themselves to God, the Pope added, recalling how Pier Giorgio once said: “The day of my death will be the most beautiful day of my life”; and how young Carlo often remarked that “heaven has always been waiting for us, and that to love tomorrow is to give the best of our fruit today.” In conclusion, Pope Leo underscored how both Saints Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis invite everyone, “especially young people, not to squander our lives, but to direct them upwards and make them masterpieces.”
In an era where the world flashes before our fingertips on the digital map, and parents are teaching their children what to see and what not to see, a 15-year-old, not even the age of their children, set out to consecrate cyber spaces and become a ‘Content Creator for Christ’. While the world is rushing to win over people, a young man has won over God himself and has been baptised with the name ‘God’s Influencer’.
