A London-born teenager, Carlo Acutis, who died of leukemia in 2006 at the age of 15, is on track to become the first millennial saint in the Catholic Church.
Pope Francis has attributed a second miracle to Acutis, paving the way for his canonization.
The late teenager, who moved with his family to Milan in Italy when he was a child, is known as the patron saint of the internet among Roman Catholics and has been referred to as “God’s influencer”.
According to The Independent, Vatican said the miracle being recognised involves a Costa Rican woman, Liliana, whose daughter Valeria Valverde, 21, suffered severe head trauma from a bicycle accident in Florence on 2 July 2022.
The Vatican says that Valeria underwent critical surgery and had slim survival chances according to her doctors. Liliana reportedly prayed at Carlo Acutis’s tomb in Assisi on 8 July, while her secretary had already begun praying to him.
That same day, according to the Vatican, Valeria started to breathe on her own, and the following day she regained some movement and speech. By 18 July, a CAT scan showed her haemorrhage had vanished, and she entered rehabilitation on 11 August, making rapid progress.
Acutis was dubbed “God’s influencer” due to his proficiency in spreading the teachings of the Catholic Church online.
He designed websites for his parish and school and launched a website documenting Eucharistic miracles just days before his death.
His website has been translated into multiple languages and has been the basis for an exhibition that has traveled worldwide.
Acutis was beatified in 2020 after being attributed with his first miracle, the healing of a Brazilian child with a congenital pancreatic disease.
The second miracle attributed to him is the healing of a university student in Florence who suffered bleeding on the brain after a head trauma.
Acutis’ life is remembered in the UK, where the Archbishop of Birmingham established the Parish of Blessed Carlo Acutis in 2020, incorporating churches in Wolverhampton and Wombourne.
His canonization would make him the first millennial saint in the Catholic Church.
