Carlo Acutis (3 May 1991 – 12 October 2006) was an English-born Italian Catholic youth and website designer who is best known for documenting Eucharistic miracles and the approved Marian apparitions around the world and cataloguing them onto a website which he created before his death from leukemia. He was noted for his cheerfulness, computer skills, and deep devotion to the Eucharist, which became a core theme of his life. He was beatified by the Catholic Church on 10 October 2020, two days before the 14th anniversary of his death.
Life
Birth and baptism
Carlo Acutis was born in London, England, on 3 May 1991, to Andrea Acutis and Antonia Salzano, members of wealthy Italian families. The Acutis family had a prominent position in the Italian insurance industry. The Salzanos ran a publishing company. Acutis' maternal great-grandmother was born in the United States and came from a family of landowners in New York.
His baptism took place on 18 May 1991 in the Church of Our Lady of Dolours, Chelsea. His paternal grandfather, Carlo, was his godfather, and his maternal grandmother, Luana, was his godmother.
His first nanny was a young Scottish woman who once gave him a small amount of alcohol to help him sleep. Neither parent was religious, and they had worked in London and Germany before Acutis was born.
Move to Italy
The family moved to Milan in September 1991, not long after Acutis' birth. Both parents began working in their families' businesses and Acutis was cared for by a new Irish nanny.
Aside from a few visits to a daycare center, most of Acutis' early care came from nannies. At once such visit to a daycare center, he began to be hassled by other children. He was now under the care of a Polish nanny who thought Acutis was "too good" and she tried to teach him to set boundaries so that the other children would not take his toys. He once responded to her that "Jesus would not be happy if I lost my temper."
In the summer, Acutis was sent to stay with his mother's parents in Centola. After spending the day at the beach, he would join a number of older women in the local parish church to pray the rosary. His family owned a boat at Santa Margherita Ligure.
School years
Acutis' first grade school, the San Carlo Institute, was one of the most elite schools in Milan. He entered in September 1997 but the school was a distance from their home and three months later he transferred to Marcelline Tommaseo Institute, a school closer to his home. During his walks to school, he took a particular interest in the home caretakers, most of whom were not Italian, he met along the way. After learning their names, he would stop to greet them personally each morning.
Starting in September 2002 he received his middle school education at the Marcelline Tommaseo Institute, which is run by the Sisters of St. Marcellina, and went to the Jesuit Instituto Leone XIII high school. He was an average student, but liked to read and independently study areas that interested him, including computer science. He also taught himself to play the saxophone. He had a tutor who helped him with his homework and ended up following him to church.
Outside school, he did volunteer work with the homeless and destitute. He also liked films, comic editing, and playing PlayStation video games. He struggled with his weight, often overindulging on Nutella. As a sacrifice, he would give up sweets or his favorite movies, like the children of Fatima. He admired the poverty of the Franciscans and sought to emulate it.
Acts of kindness
Acutis was a lover of nature. His father bought him a device to pick up trash while hiking so that he would not fill his pockets with trash and cigarette butts. While at the beach, he used an inflatable boat, snorkel, and fins to retrieve trash in the ocean. He also became very angry when he encountered young people who were stomping on lizards. An animal lover, he had two cats, four dogs, and fish at home, and asked his parents to take in every stray animal he found.
On the social side, Acutis would worry about friends of his whose parents were divorcing and would invite them to his home to support them. He defended peers at school when bullies mocked them. He would sometimes see two friends at school fighting, and then invite them back to his house after school to help them reconcile. He also spoke up for girls who were being whistled at or harassed, and told the boys doing so to stop.