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Carlo Acutis was set to be canonized just after Easter this year, but the sudden death of Pope Francis delayed the historic moment. Now, on September 7, the teenager known as “God’s influencer” will officially become the first millennial saint.
His mother, Antonia Salzano, told Fox News Digital that her son’s faith not only changed the Catholic Church — it changed her life.
In an interview that took place in April, she told the outlet she was “far away” from the church after being raised in a non-religious household. She attended Catholic school out of sheer convenience, and had only stepped foot inside a church on three distinct occasions — all of which were to complete sacraments that aligned with her school curriculum.
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To Antonia, it was protocol — a matriculation, even, of sorts — as her Catholic sacraments were likened to assignments.
That is, until Carlo was five years old and a beloved priest from Bologna, Italy, who had “the discernment of the spirit,” told Antonia that her young boy would grow up to be someone special.
Struck by the priest’s prediction, it marked the moment her life would change forever.
“Carlo, for me, was a savior,” Antonia told the outlet. “He was a mystic.”
Soon-to-be Saint Carlo Acutis, who’s slated to be canonized as a saint by Pope Francis on April 27, alongside friends as depicted in new documentary film, “Carlos Acutis: Roadmap to Reality.” (Castletown Media)
The soon-to-be saint and his mother would study theology and attend daily Mass together, often at the latter’s encouragement.
When he died at the age of 15, he later visited Antonia in a dream, announcing he would one day be canonized — a prophecy affirmed years later when the Church recognized the first of two miracles attributed to his intercession.
Four years after Carlo’s death from leukemia in 2006, Antonia would become a recipient of her son’s intercession in her own right.
“When Carlo died, I was 39 years old, and then I started to try to have other children. I said, ‘I’m still young, maybe I can try, no?’ [But] the children didn’t arrive. Then I had started on my practice to adopt a child, but in Italy, it’s very difficult… I had lost all my hopes to have children by myself,” she explained. “Once I dreamed about Carlo, he told me, ‘listen, you will become, again, a mother. Don’t worry.’ And, one month after, I became pregnant.”
After years of struggling to accept that she’d never be a mother again, her twins, Francesca and Michele, would share a due date on the anniversary of Carlo’s passing.
“He [Carlo] understood there was a lack of faith… so he used the internet for goodness.”
Born in 1991 and a product of his 1990s-2000s upbringing, Antonia told Fox News Digital that Carlo’s mission was to evangelize using the internet.
Before technology would pique his intrigue, Carlo was a charitable child — spending his early years helping those in need in his neighborhood of Milan, where he often provided garments and food for the city’s homeless population.
“Mother Teresa used to say we don’t need to help around the world because it’s sufficient to go outside our house where we will find our Calcutta,” she said. “And Carlo found his Calcutta in Milano.”
When it dawned on Carlo that feeding a soul is as vital as feeding a stomach, the tech-savvy teenager honed his website-building skills to document Eucharistic miracles and Marian apparitions.
It was, as Antonia described, “the light side of the internet.”
“Sometimes we are unprepared about this impact of social media, the internet,” Antonia said. “I understood straight away that the internet had the light side of internet. And you could say that there is also the dark side. Unfortunately, especially young people, pass hours in front of these things and they lose their freedom. So, it can be very dangerous.”
Those dangers are explored in the new documentary film, “Carlo Acutis: Roadmap to Reality,” in which Antonia offers commentary. The film, a joint effort between Castletown Media and Jim Wahlberg’s Wahl Street Productions, exposes the social dilemma of social media by challenging a group of teenagers to part ways with their devices on a Catholic pilgrimage to Carlo’s tomb.
“[The world] wants to digitalize your soul… But, with Jesus, we don’t have to fear.”
In speaking about the film, Antonia described her son as being a “sign of hope” amid the virtual landscape of our society — as public discourse surrounding Carlo’s impact has led to monikers like “God’s Influencer” and “The Patron Saint of the Internet.”
His impact has also led to groups like FOCUS (the Fellowship of Catholic University Students), whose digital reach spans 46 countries and allows 700,000+ people worldwide each month to encounter Christ through social media. Many of their posts have gone viral — proving the pervasiveness of the Gospel today.
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“He [Carlo] understood there was a lack of faith,” Antonia said of her son. “He used to say there are thousands of people going in front of a concert, in front of a football match. I don’t see them in front of the Tabernacle, where there is the house of Jesus that is really present among us.”
“So he used the internet for goodness. He lived all the dangers the young people and all the people are living now. But he was able to dominate, to be free, always to maintain his freedom, not to become a slave [to it].”
Through his technological endeavors and spiritual discipline, Carlo Acutis would end up leaving his global mark — as Catholic leaders all over the world now look to him to relate to today’s younger generations.
His mother agrees, echoing the church leaders’ position that Carlo is an antidote to our social media-addicted society.
“Surely, Carlo is a work of God. So, the fact that God gives through Carlo all these graces is… probably, God wants to help us, our society, our young people; the parents as well, because the problem is also the parents,” she told Fox News Digital.
“Carlo is an instrument, because he lived the things we are living. He was dressed like most of the young people, the teenagers. Most of the saints of the past sometimes seem unreachable, because they are too high, too holy. Sometimes they seem very far away from us. Instead, [Carlo] came to teach us that, in the daily life, we can become holy in our routine. Thinking of God, offering our work to God with a prayer, our life becomes a continuous prayer. So the mysticism… we are all mystic because we have the Holy Trinity inside us. The only problem is that we don’t have the connection with the presence of God in us.”
Antonia asserted it’s a matter of having that desire to connect.
“Of course, at the beginning it will not be easy,” she started. “But with practice, with the constant will, if we really desire [this] in our heart, God will reward us. We have to have that desire in the soul of the people.”
“Carlo used to say that all are born originals, but many die as photocopies… the important thing is to remind these children that they are all unique.”
Antonia, now a devoted Catholic who says the sacraments she’s made are “the supernatural means God uses to give us grace,” concluded by imploring readers to realize that we are all original works of art and have a “special project” that God has in store for each one of us — if only we’re receptive to it.
Carlo Acutis, along with Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, will be canonized on September 7, 2025 in St. Peter’s Square — a landmark moment in the Church’s calendar and the first canonization ceremony of Pope Leo XIV’s pontificate.
