Italy’s new 16-year-old saint1 min read

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Carlo Acutis, a teenage computer genius and programmer from Italy, is being honoured in a special way – he is being made a saint! A saint is someone who is recognised a holy or virtuous person in Christianity. It is believed that all saints go to heaven after their death.

Carlo lost his life in 2006 at age 15 after a battle with leukemia, which is a type of cancer of the blood. To honour his life and hard work, he is being called the ‘patron saint of the Internet’, after he spent the last few years of his life creating a website to catalog miracles, and also managed the websites of many Catholic organisations.

Now, a portrait of Carlo has been put up the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, in central Italy. He is the first person of his age to be made a saint!

Though it is rare of someone so young to become a saint, in the early 1900s, two Portuguese shepherd children had were declared saints.