Assisi, 10 October 2020 – The Church beatifies theinfluencer of God, crushed only fifteen years by one leukemia fulminant. This afternoon the eternal young man Acute Carlo, who died in 2016, was proclaimed blessed in Upper Basilica of Assisi, land of his beloved Saint Francis. In front of more than three thousand devotees, the papal legate, Cardinal Agostino Vallini, he celebrated “the enthusiasm of his youth with which he cultivated friendship in Jesus”. Once he discovered the image of the adolescent on the altar, the former vicar general of Rome embraced the mother and father of the boy who was hired as a model of holiness in theit was digital by Pope Francis in the pages of the apostolic exhortation ‘Christus vivit’, addressed to the new generations. Decisive for the ascent of Acutis to the altars the miracle, attributed to him, of the healing of a Brazilian child born with a congenital malformation of the pancreas. The liturgical memorial of the newly blessed was set for October 12, the day of his death.
Chi era Acute Carlo
Originally from London, but raised in Milan in a wealthy family – he bears the name of his grandfather, the historic patron of Vittoria Assicurazioni -, Acutis in his short life put his computer talent to increase the ranks of Jesus’ followers. His mother, Antonia Salzano, the first to define him as the influencer of God, says that her son played at being a computer scientist, made videos and montages with his camera and packaged online magazines. Gradually Acutis begins to study on specialized manuals, used in computer engineering faculties, to become, from pure self-taught, a programmer more and more experienced. If the Eucharist is “the highway to heaven”, the Net in his view represents “a vehicle for evangelization and catechesis”. On the web, the virtual exhibition, designed by the teenager a few months before his death, dedicated to Eucharistic miracles. Soon the Holy See could declare it patron of the Internet. For the moment Acutis remains the first millennial to be beatified, among other things in record time. Just fourteen years after his death.
Eucharist and Marian devotion mark the existence of the little boy who in religious choices is not influenced by the family, but on the contrary it is he himself who increases his parents in wedding ring. And not only them, if it is true that the servant of the house converts from Hinduism to Catholicism precisely in the light of the adolescent’s Christian witness. Who does not give up on jeans, to the ball and the passion for trekking. The great, only love, however, is God. Twelve-year-old Acutis decides to attend mass every day and to recite daily the rosary. The constancy in Eucharistic adoration leads him to say that “when you face the sun, you get a tan, but when you stand before Jesus the Eucharist you become saints”.
Faith professed is mixed with a charity spent in favor of the homeless and with the interreligious dialogue put into practice on returning from school with the foreign porters of his neighborhood. Respect for priests does not prevent Acutis from arguing express with a priest who doubts the doctrine on Purgatory e the hell. All this, however, in the firm conviction that “whoever criticizes the Church, criticizes himself”, testifying to a wide ecclesial vision of the young and in the wake of Vatican II which includes both priests and laity among the people of God.
Although he died in Monza, the newly blessed was buried in Assisi in accordance with his wishes. A few days ago at the Shrine of the Spoliation it was opened tomb to allow their veneration. The young man, dressed in a simple track suit, seemed to be asleep. On devotional sites, a miracle was immediately shouted. To dispel any allegation, the bishop of the Umbrian city, Domenico Sorrentino, intervened immediately, stating that the body was not uncorrupted, but chemically treated to allow for public exposure. Senzationalisms aside, the beatification of Acutis counts. A young man devoted to a simple, traditional, reassuring faith (at least for the ecclesial leaders), at the same time also a teenager capable of navigating the sea of the Internet without fear or prejudice to make God known to his peers. Yes, a miracle nowadays.
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