Blessed Carlo Acutis is an example of faith that even converted his mother!
Antonia Salzano told iNews that Acutis did not inherit his religious instincts from her or her husband.
“I was not an example of saintliness as a child – quite the opposite. When I got married it was the third mass I’d ever attended.”
“I was evangelised by Carlo,” she said.
The blessed boy
Salzano says he loved watching football and playing video games. And while he helped Milan’s poor and needy, and built numerous websites for spreading religious teachings, her son always prioritised his faith.
She has also had first-hand experience of her son’s miracles, she says.
One night, after several unsuccessful attempts to have another child, Salzano says her son appeared to her in a dream, telling her that she would become a mother again.
On the anniversary of Blessed Carolo’s death in 2010, his 44-year old mother gave birth to twin daughters.
Life is eternal
Salzano says her son helped people concentrate on the transitory nature of life.
He noticed many struggling to understand that life is eternal.
“He said that death was the passage to real life and whoever is scared of death doesn’t have faith.”
Nor did he want to focus on his own illness and suffering.
“When the doctors asked him whether he was suffering, he said: ‘there are people in this world that suffer more than me’.”
The young saint’s example
Blessed Carlos’s faith was obvious from an early age, his mother says.
He began attending daily Mass from the age of seven.
He limited himself to using his Playstation though to one hour a week as a form of spiritual discipline.
He loved visiting homeless people, to whom he gave his pocket money and donated food or sleeping bags.
He also designed websites for his parish and school, and a site cataloguing Eucharistic miracles from around the world.
That website is translated into nearly 20 languages.
After he died, a Vatican-sponsored photo exhibition on miracles drawn from his website traveled the world.
On 1 July 2024, Pope Francis presided at an Ordinary Consistory of Cardinals, which approved his canonisation.
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