15-year-old coder, known as God’s influencer, made first millennial Catholic saint

Pope Leo XIV on Sunday declared 15-year-old computer prodigy Carlo Acutis the Catholic Church’s first millennial saint, offering young Catholics a modern role model who embraced technology to spread the faith and earn the nickname “God’s influencer."

Leo canonised Carlo Acutis, who died in 2006, during an open-air Mass in St. Peter’s Square before an estimated 80,000 people, many of them millennials and couples with young children. In his first canonisation ceremony as pope, Leo also declared Pier Giorgio Frassati, another revered young Italian, a saint.

Leo said both men created “masterpieces" out of their lives by dedicating them to God.

“The greatest risk in life is to waste it outside of God’s plan," Leo said in his homily. The new saints “are an invitation to all of us, especially young people, not to squander our lives, but to direct them upwards and make them masterpieces," AP reported.