Pope Leo XIV on Sunday proclaimed two new saints — a 15-year-old computer enthusiast from the internet era and an activist layman from early 20th-century Italy — during an open-air Mass at St. Peter’s Square attended by an estimated 80,000 people.
Carlo Acutis, born in 1991 and who died in 2006 of acute leukemia at age 15, became the Catholic Church’s first canonized millennial. The pope also declared Pier Giorgio Frassati, an Italian student and outdoorsman who died in his early 20s of polio in 1925, a saint.
In his homily, Leo said both men had fashioned "masterpieces" by dedicating their lives to God and warned that "the greatest risk in life is to waste it outside of God’s plan." He described the new saints as an "invitation to all of us, especially young people, not to squander our lives, but to direct them upwards and make them masterpieces."
Acutis earned the nickname "God’s Influencer" for creating a multilingual website that cataloged Eucharistic miracles recognized by the church. The project, completed while he was a teenager, compiled reports and photographic material in a format that church leaders said was unusual for someone his age. He was entombed in Assisi after his death.
Pope Francis had actively advanced Acutis’s cause for sainthood, arguing the church needed figures capable of engaging young Catholics and addressing the opportunities and risks of the digital era. Leo, who inherited that cause, has also cited technology and artificial intelligence as among the principal challenges facing humanity.
Frassati, remembered by Catholic educators and devotees as a model of lay spirituality, spent much of his short life in humble, mostly hidden service to the poor of Turin. The Frassati Catholic Academy noted that he lived simply and gave away food, money or whatever anyone asked of him. Church accounts say he likely contracted the polio that killed him while ministering in the city’s slums.
The canonizations took place as the Vatican begins a jubilee year of religious observance and pilgrimage expected to draw millions of visitors. Vatican officials have projected large crowds for key liturgical events during the period, which organizers say is intended to renew spiritual life and encourage acts of charity.
Pilgrims and tourists had gathered early in St. Peter’s Square for the open-air Mass. Witnesses at the event described a mixture of solemn liturgy and festive devotion as cardinals, bishops and representatives from around the world joined the rite.
Church officials said the declarations followed the Vatican’s established procedures for recognizing sainthood, including investigations into the candidates’ lives and any approved miracles attributed to their intercession. Acutis’s rapid rise to prominence within contemporary Catholic devotional life has been noted by clergy and laypeople alike as emblematic of the church’s effort to engage with the faithful in the digital age.
After the Mass, devotees of both new saints are expected to increase visits to sites associated with them: Acutis’s tomb in Assisi and Frassati’s places of ministry in Turin. The Vatican’s move to canonize a figure born in 1991 marks a notable moment in modern church life, highlighting both the continuity of traditional devotional practice and debates inside Catholicism about youth engagement and technology.
The canonizations were reported live by international media and drew commentary from Catholic organizations that have championed the two men’s causes. Church leaders said they hope the new saints will inspire charitable works and a renewed focus on spiritual formation among young people and lay communities worldwide.