I’ll confess straight off: I’m a lapsed Catholic. Weekly Mass, being an altar boy and praying to saints were all a part of my Italian-British childhood. St Anthony was the hotline for lost things, St Christopher the traveller’s companion, portraits of Our Lady hung above doorways. It feels like another lifetime.

Yet now the Church has canonised its first millennial saint, Carlo Acutis , and I can’t help but be intrigued. I’m also certain that it will attract some younger people to at least explore Catholicism.

Carlo was born in London to Italian parents, moved to Milan as a child, and died tragically young of leukaemia in 2006, aged just 15. He built websites to showcase Eucharistic miracles, juggled PlayStation gaming with Mass, and earned the nickname “God’s Influencer.”

His mother

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