From baptism of London to the first millennium Saint

A boy born in London became the first holy millennium, during a ceremony imbued with an old ritual chaired by Pope Leo on Sunday.

In his short life, Carlo Acutis created websites documenting “miracles” as a means of spreading Catholic education, which led some to nickname the influencer of God.

His canonization had been due at the end of April, but was postponed after the death of Pope Francis.

More than a million people have been estimated who have made a pilgrimage to the Italian hill city of Assisi where the body of Carlo is located, kept in wax.

But there is another pilgrimage site associated with Carlo Acutis which has increased by visitors since it was announced that it had to be made a Saint-Notre-Dame de Dolours in London.

Police at the back of the Roman Catholic church in the Chelsea region was the place where Carlo was baptized as a baby in 1991.

On the side of the church, an old confession stand was converted into a sanctuary. In this document, a relic support contains a single wick of Carlo hair.

“His family was in finance and they really worked temporarily in London,” said Father Paul Addison, a brother in the church.

“Although they did not use the church much, they decided to come and ask the baptized child. So Carlo was a flash, a very large flash, in the life of the parish community,” he said.

Carlo was not yet six months old when his parents returned to their country of origin in Italy, and he spent the rest of his life in Milan.

There he was known for the love of technology and would have liked to play video games.

While some who knew Carlo Acutis said that he did not seem to be particularly devoted, in adolescence, he created a website – of which pages are now supervised at the Church of Chelsea – in which miracles have been documented.

But he died leukemia at only 15 years old.

In the years following her death, Carlo’s mother Antonia Salzano visited churches around the world to defend her saint.

As part of the process, it was necessary to prove that his son had carried out “miracles”.

“The first miracle, he did the day of the funeral,” said Carlo’s mother.

“A woman with breast cancer prayed (for) Carlo and she had to start chemotherapy and cancer completely disappeared,” she explains.

Pope Francis allocated two miracles to Carlo Acutis and the test was therefore passed and it was to be made a saint on April 27.

But Pope Francis died in the previous week.

Some followers who had traveled in Rome for canonization were rather among the tens of thousands of people in mourning during the funeral of the deceased pontiff – Diego Sarkissian, a young Catholic in London, was one of them.

He says he feels a link with Carlo Acutis and is excited by his canonization.

“He was playing Super Mario video games on Old Nintendo Consoles and I have always loved video games,” said Sarkissian.

“The fact that you can think of a saint doing the same things (as you), carrying jeans, it feels so much closer than what other saints have felt in the past,” he said.

Approval for someone to become a saint can take decades, even centuries, but there is a feeling that the canonization of the Vatican has accelerated Carlo acutis as a means of energizing and inspiring faith in young people.

The Catholic church hopes that Sunday events will do that exactly.