Assisi, Italy (AP) – the worshipers are poured into this medieval city on the hill to worship not only two of the most famous saints of the Catholic Church, Francis and Claire, but also its most – Carlo Akutis, the first millennial saint to be canonized on April 27.
“St. Francis, St. Claire, of course, important saints who celebrated the era, but this is far from today’s teenagers. Carlo is like the children,” says Maria Rosario Richio, a mother and teacher who recently visits Akutis at the sanctuary with a 50-strong parish group from southern Italy. “He is close to our time, who can show teenagers that it is possible to love Jesus while it is regular youth.”
The group was arranged to join Santoario dellasariazion, a dark church, also known as Santa Maria Magiore, noting the place where more than 800 years ago St. Francis abandoned the wealth of his family. There, they prayed from the monument where the body of Akutis is a view, wearing jeans, sweatshirts and sneakers.
This Saturday, hundreds filed the past – a priest and his parishioners from the Azores Islands, a nun from Colombia and her passions sisters, a family with two teenagers from near Venice. Some clenched rosaries, others took selfies or touched the protective glass in front of the seemingly sleeping young man who died of leukemia in 2006 and generated devotion that surprised even the bishop of Assisi.
“Here I see a volcano of grace bursting … I can’t believe my eyes,” said Reverend Domenico Sorrentino. When he became a bishop two decades ago, the church next to his residence right next to the main street was “forgotten” by the crowds who visited the monumental basilica of St. Francis.
Over the last year, more than a million worshipers have paid tribute to Akutis, said Sorrentino, derived from “his smiling lifestyle of our faith.”
The happy image of the teenager, usually in a red shirt of polo and wearing a backpack, is as popular in souvenir shops throughout the city as Francis in his simple brown habit.
The owner of a shop lifted a blessed icon the first time he went to the sanctuary and kept him glued to her cash register.
“I was really curious about this new saint that attracts youth,” said Sylvia Balducci.
Both the church and his family describe Akutis as an extremely pious but otherwise regular Italian boy who works wonders after his untimely death, attracting the youth of faith when most of his contemporaries abandon the organized religion.
“Carlo was not extraterrestrial, he was a normal man. But if it was illuminated by the light of Christ, life became exceptional,” his mother Antonia Salzano Akutis told the Associated Press. “We always pray to the saints and in the end what did the saints do? They opened the doors of their lives for Christ.”
She cites one of her son’s favorite phrases: “” Everyone is born original, but many die photocopies. “
“It is the saint who did not die as a photocopy, who realized this project of holiness that God has established in eternity for each of us,” she said.
Not the observation Catholic herself, when he had it, Akuti was joking with her husband that their young son was “a little Buddha” because of her selfless, attention to others and cheerful submission.
He developed a cautious interest in faith, such as wanting to enter every church to “congratulate” Jesus and Mary. Later, he began to visit the liturgy, adore the blessed mystery, and prays daily on the rosary daily -while having fun with his friends who were less interested in religion and more to go to nightclubs with his girlfriends and smoke random joints.
“It was a little way to hide his life of faith because Carlo knew his friends couldn’t understand,” his mother said. “But Carlo was a witness, a silent witness through the value of friendship, through the value of generosity, helping his classmates at school, protecting the teenagers who were harassed.”
Acutis often helped the homeless and was disinterested in traps, often found as a rich child in Milan, one of the European fashion and business capitals. He asked his parents to donate to the poor what they would spend on a second pair of sneakers on him, and insisted that he wanted to learn catechism in his parish instead of going to a ski holiday at Fancy Resorts like his peers.
This refusal of a privilege was a parallel with St. Francis, to whom Akuti was so devoted that he wanted to be buried in Assisi, said the Reverend Enzo Fortunato, who spent the greatest part of his religious career there and led the Papal Committee on World Children’s Day.
“And there are more similarities to St. Francis. St. Francis left the churches and went to the squares to preach. Carlo Akuti, she propheated prophetic that the public squares were online on the web today,” Fortunato said. “That’s where the young people are, there are people, so he lives and carries the gospel in these squares. This is one of the reasons for him to become the patron saint of the network, the Internet and the social media.”
Particularly pious to the Eucharist and wanting to share the Catholic belief that Jesus is literally present in it, Acutis has created an online exhibit for miracles in which bread and wine have become flesh and blood over the centuries. It is used in thousands of parishes around the world, his mother said.
For her, his is a “bridge to Jesus” – even in his terminal illness he encountered, without complaining, probably from eternal life – is a more important heritage than all miracles or supernatural signs.
However, to become a saint, miracles must be testified. One of the process of acute canonization was the healing of Costa Rica student from a bicycle crash in Italy after her mother prayed for him, Sorentino said.
Sabina Flaceta often goes to the Akutis sanctuary from the nearby city of Perugia with a group of mothers to pray for their children.
“Carlo Akutis gives us peace,” she said. “Most importantly, he gives us the confidence that God is a good father. And you can’t ask for more.”
While she was talking outside the sanctuary, a confirmation group from Lake Garda in northern Italy prayed in a circle through a cut of acutes in his jeans and a backpack standing to a larger monster monster.
One of the catechists, Veronica Abraham, said she had taught both St. Francis and Acutis, focusing on the teenager’s charity and customary to sit with anyone who seems lonely, “because even Ciao is important to those who are alone.”
Her son, Mario Girardi, 13, said he was truly struck by the fact that Acutis – when only a few years older than him – “Talk to everyone, did not allow anything to bother him, but it helped everyone.”
Until he is considering the priesthood, Girardi goes to church every Sunday and plans to “always stay in this way of thinking” – perhaps even to go to a daily liturgy.
Would you like to become a saint?
“Well, let’s hope. Yes, right? Never say, who knows,” the boy said, grinning.
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