A Millennial in Paradise

Book excerpt: In each generation, heroes of the Faith, whom the Church recognizes as saints, emerge. There are many characteristics that they have in common, but none thus far have used cell phones, played PlayStation video games, or searched for information on Google. That is about to change. A young "computer geek" named Carlo Acutis, who created a website cataloguing every reported Eucharistic miracle in the world and died of leukemia a year later at age fifteen, was beatified in November 2019, after a healing miracle in Brazil was attributed to his intercession. Since the beatification ceremony one year later, solemn crowds have been filing past the exposed relics of the blessed youth in Assisi's Church of Santa Maria Maggiore. Carlo is a sign of contradiction in the modern world who serves as a heroic model for today's young people--a teenager who programmed computers and enjoyed films and comics yet lived as an authentic and sincere disciple of Christ. In these pages, you'll discover how he embraced the Faith as a boy and developed the virtues necessary to live a Christ-centered life in a secular society, how he overcame the vices that plagued him, and how he gracefully dealt with heartaches he could not divulge even to his parents. When he developed leukemia, he offered his suffering both for Pope Benedict XVI and for the Catholic Church, saying: "I offer all the suffering I will have to undergo for the Lord, for the Pope, and the Church." In this surprising and inspiring book, you'll also learn: How Carlo became holy, in only a few short years The young man's unusual loneliness and how he dealt with it His strategy for resisting peer pressure How he had fun without losing control and learned to resist gluttony How he interacted with teen girls who became his friends Why his explanations about the Mass are used in today's catechism classes in Italy How he dealt with friends who were sexually promiscuous and what he told them How he responded to the shocking news that he was dying (which happened two weeks later) His remarkable Eucharistic Miracles Exhibition--made possible by his computer skills--that is now touring churches all over Europe