Why Carlo Acutis is important today: "He is a millennial, a young man who brings holiness into the third millennium"

Father Will Conquer, a young missionary who recently wrote a book about the Italian teenager, discusses why he is such a source of fascination for people around the world.

In recent weeks his name has been on everyone's lips and the images of his open tomb in Assisi have invaded the internet. The world saw the body of a little boy in Nike sneakers and a sweatshirt on display for the public's veneration.

Judging by the outburst of sentiment, Carlo Acutis, who died of leukemia in 2006 at the age of 15, apparently left an indelible mark on the world, thanks to the life of holiness he lived and the model of virtue he embodied.

The Italian teenager - who will be beatified in Assisi during a ceremony presided over on Saturday 10 October by Cardinal Agostino Vallini, former vicar general of Rome - was a boy of his time. In fact, in addition to having a vibrant passion for the Eucharist and the Virgin Mary, he was also known to be a football fan and, above all, a computer genius.

To better understand the popular and media phenomenon that this atypical figure of holiness is arousing in the world, the Register interviewed a young Franco-American missionary in Cambodia, Father Will Conquer of the Paris Foreign Missions, who recently paid tribute to the future adolescent " Beato ”through the book Carlo Acutis, Un Geek au Paradis (Carlo Acutis, a Nerd to Heaven).

You have highlighted, on social media, the miraculous dimension of the popular mania for the upcoming beatification of Carlo Acutis. Why is it surprising?

You have to understand the immensity of the thing. It is not a canonization, but a beatification. It is not organized in Rome, but in Assisi; it is not presided over by the Pope, but by the Vicar General Emeritus of Rome. There is something beyond us in the excitement it arouses in people. It is very surprising. A simple image of a young man whose body remained intact literally went viral. Also, in just a few days, there were more than 213.000 views on EWTNsu Acutis documentary in Spanish. Because? Because it is the first time in history that parents will see their son beatified. It is the first time in the third millennium that we will see a young man of this generation enter heaven. It is the first time we see a little boy wearing sneakers and a trendy shirt to show us a life model. It is truly extraordinary. It is necessary to take note of this infatuation.

What is it that fascinates people so much about the Acutis personality?

Before talking about his personality, I would like to mention the debates surrounding the body of Carlo Acutis, which partly caused the media enthusiasm because people are a little confused in thinking that this body has remained whole. Some people have said that the body was uncorrupted, but we remember that the boy died of a [serious] fulminant disease, so his body was not intact when he died. We must accept that, after years, the body is never really the same. Even uncorrupted bodies suffer a little from the work of time. What is fascinating, however, is that his body remains. Normally, a young person's body degrades much faster than an older person's body; as a young body is full of life, cells renew themselves faster. There is certainly something miraculous about this because there has been a preservation beyond normal.

So the thing that attracts people the most is its proximity to the current world. The problem with Carlo, as with all figures of holiness, is that we tend to want to distance ourselves by attributing to him many great deeds and marvelous miracles, but Carlo will always return to us for his closeness and his "banality", his normality, which make it one of us. He is a millennial, a young man who brings holiness into the third millennium. He is a saint who lived a small part of his life in the new millennium. This closeness of contemporary holiness, just like that of Mother Teresa or John Paul II, is fascinating.

You just remembered that Carlo Acutis was a millennial. He was in fact known for his computer programming skills and his missionary work on the Internet. How can this inspire us in a digital dominated society?

He is the first sacred figure to become famous by generating a buzz on the Internet, and not by a specific popular devotion. We have lost count of the Facebook accounts or pages created in your name. This internet phenomenon is very important, especially in a year where we spent more time on screens than ever due to the worldwide blockade. This [online] space kills time a lot and is a den of iniquity for the souls of [many] people. But it can also become a place of sanctification.

Carlo, who was a fanatic, spent less time on the computer than we do today. Nowadays, we wake up with our laptops. We go running with our smartphones, we call ourselves, we pray with it, we run, we read with it and we also commit sins through it. The idea is to say that it can show us an alternative path. We can waste so much time on this thing, and we see someone who actually saved their soul by using it wisely.

Thanks to him we know that it is up to us to make the Internet a place of light rather than a place of darkness.

What touches you the most about him personally?

It is undoubtedly the purity of his heart. The controversy initiated by people who stressed the fact that his body was not uncorrupted to discredit his sanctity made me think that they find it hard to accept the purity of this boy's life. They find it difficult to get involved in something miraculous but ordinary. Charles embodies ordinary holiness; ordinary purity. I say this in relation to his illness, for example; the way he accepted the disease. I like to say that he experienced a sort of "transparent" martyrdom, like all those children who accepted their illness and offered it for the conversion of the world, for the holiness of priests, for vocations, for their parents, brothers and sisters. There are many examples of this. He is not a red martyr, who had to bear witness to the faith at the cost of his life, nor a white martyr, like all monks who have lived their whole life under rigid asceticism, bearing witness to Christ. He is a transparent martyr, with a pure heart. The Gospel says: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God" (Matthew 5: 8). But above all, they give us an idea of ​​God.

We live in a world that has never been so impure, doctrinally and intentionally speaking. Carlo is pure in every way. Already in his day he was fighting the moral decay of this world, which has since become more pronounced. It gives hope, because he was able to live with a pure heart in the harshness of the 21st century.

Tadie-Father Will Conquer
“Already in his day he was battling the moral decay of this world, which has since become more pronounced. It gives hope, because it has been able to live with a pure heart in the harshness of the XNUMXst century ', says Father Will Conquer of Carlo Acutis. (Photo: Courtesy of Father Will Conquer)

Would you say that the younger generations are more receptive to his life witness?

His life is marked by an intergenerational dimension. Carlo is one who traveled with the elders of his Milanese parish in southern Italy to accompany them. He is the young man who went fishing with his grandfather. He spent time with the elderly. He received his faith from his grandparents.

It also gives a lot of hope to the older generation. I realized this because the person who buys my book is often an elderly person. In this year marked by the coronavirus crisis, which has mostly killed the elderly, there has been a greater need for sources of hope. If these people die without hope in a world where [many] no longer [are] going to Mass, no longer praying, no longer putting God at the center of life, it is even more difficult. They see in Carlo a way to bring their children and grandchildren closer to the Catholic faith. Many of them suffer because their children have no faith. And seeing a child who is about to be beatified gives them hope for their children.

Furthermore, the loss of our elders is also a significant source of distress for the COVID generation. Many children in Italy have lost their grandparents this year.

The interesting thing is that the first test in Carlo's life was also the loss of his grandfather. It was an ordeal in her faith because she had prayed a lot that her grandfather could be saved, but it didn't happen. He wondered why his grandfather had abandoned him. Since she has been through the same grief, she can comfort anyone who has lost their grandparents lately.

Many young people in Italy will no longer have grandparents to pass on the faith to them. There is a great loss of faith in the country right now, so this older generation must be able to pass the baton to young people like Carlo who will keep the faith alive.