Pope Leo XIV canonize this Sunday (7) two young people, Carlo Acutis and Pier Giorgio Frassati, in St. Peter’s Square in Rome. The celebration, the first canonization of the new Pope, officially raises to Santos two young people from different times.
The particularity of this canonization is that both will be very young saints, coming from upper -class families, with interests similar to those of young people today, not religious or lay people from another distant time.
In an interview with the Vatican News Portal, Cardinal Marcelo Semeraro pointed out that Acutis (1991-2006) and Frassati (1901-1925) are “examples of accessible holiness”, experienced by ordinary young people. Both dedicated themselves to the poor and had the Eucharist as the center of their lives.
According to the religious, their stories show that the practice of Christian virtues is interconnected, forming a “symphony” or “polyhedron”, an image used by Pope Francis to describe the church.
Frassats: the equitable eth
Born in Turin, Pier Giorgio Frassati dedicated himself to helping others, despite living in a upper-class family, as his father was the founder and owner of the newspaper “La Stampa”. Loved theater, music, painting, literature and mountain walks, but studied Minas Engineering to “serve Christ among the miners
Died at the age of 24, from a poliomelitis, Frassati is seen by Semeraro as a model of the layman proposed by the Second Vatican Council. He lived the gospel fully in his daily life, discreetly.
His dedication to the poorest only became known after his death, when the large presence of marginalized people on his funeral revealed to his family and society the reach of their charity.
For the cardinal, Frassati shows that holiness can be practiced without fanfare. “His death was an epiphany,” said the cardinal, to whom “Frassati went to the poor because he found Christ.”
Acute, O “Santo Give the Internet”
Carlo Acutis was born in London, where her parents lived at work on May 3, 1991. But she spent her childhood in Milan and, although her family was not a practitioner, since she made her first communion, she began to go to the church every day and, above all, to dedicate herself to the most disadvantaged.
His mother, Antonia Salzano, who will take the relic from her heart to the altar on Sunday during canonization, explains that he was a computer genius and that he began to speak of God through the web, and so many already consider him the patron saint of the internet.
The young man died on October 12, 2006 at the San Gerardo de Monza Hospital, at age 15, and was beatified on October 10, 2020 at the Higher Basilica of San Francisco in Assisi, under the pontificate of Pope Francis, after the approval of the cure miracle of a Brazilian boy, Matheus Viana.
His engagement with faith and dedication to the needy was also a surprise to his parents, who only discovered the depth of his charity and faith after his death. Semeraro described him as a young man who had his “highway to heaven” in the Eucharist, living faith with the possibilities of his age. Acutis and Frassati show that “different ages of life” can be ways to holiness.
Rua Santos
For Cardinal Semeraro, the lives of Acutis and Frassati, who were not in religious institutes, demonstrate the existence of the “street saints”, figures that Pope Francis describes as holiness “of the door alongside”.
“There are saints who, as the mystical Madeleine Delbrêl pointed out, grow in nurseries because they are in a religious institute, are consecrated. There are others, such as Acutis and Frassati, who were in the world, the saints of the street,” said Semeraro.
Both were proposed by Pope Leo XIV as models for new generations, especially in the recent Youth Jubilee, reinforcing that the search for holiness is a universal call, accessible to all.
