Pope Leo XIV called a 15-year-old computer genius from the first millennial saint of the Catholic Church, along with another popular Italian figure who spent his life spreading his faith before he died at a young age.
Leo Cannonized Carlo Acutis, who died of leukemia in 2006, and Italian student and avid outdoor man Pier Giorgio Frassati, who died in his early 1920s in 1925, during an open -air mass in St. Peter’s Square for an estimated 80,000 people.
Leo said that both saints have created “masterpieces” from their lives by devoting them to God.
“The greatest risk in life is to waste it outside of God’s plan,” said Leo in his Sunday homily. The new saints “are an invitation to all of us, especially young people, not to waste our lives, but to send them up and make masterpieces.”
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Pope Leo XIV arrives for the canonization of Carlo Acutis and Pier Giorgio Frassati on St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican Sunday 7 September 2025. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Acutis was born on May 3, 1991 and earned the nickname “God’s influencer” after creating a multilingual website that has documented so -called Eucharistic miracles that are recognized by the church. The teenager ended the site at a time when such projects were usually in the government of professionals.
Pilgrims arrive for the canonization of Carlo Acutis and Pier Giorgio Frassati on St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican Sunday 7 September 2025. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
In October 2006, Acutis fell ill and was diagnosed with acute leukemia. He died within a few days at just 15 years old. He was buried in Assisi.
Pope Francis wanted the Acutis Sainthood case fervently forward – convinced that the church needed someone as he needed to attract young Catholics to faith while approaching the promises and dangers of the digital age.
A view of the canonization mass celebrated by Pope Leo XIV from Carlo Acutis and Pier Giorgio Frassati on St. Peter’s Square on the Vatican on Sunday 7 September 2025. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Leo inherited the Acutis cause, but he also pointed to technology – especially artificial intelligence – as one of the most important challenges that humanity is confronted with.
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Frassati, the other holy holy holy, was a “beacon for layman spirituality,” said Leo.
Frassati lived his faith through ‘constant, modest, mostly hidden service on the poorest in Turin’, the Frassati Catholic Academy. “He simply lived and gave food, money away or something that someone asked of him.”
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It is believed that he has sustained polio from those he served in the slums of Turin, Italy, before his death.
