Homily given at Our Lady of Dolours, Fulham Road for the Thanksgiving Mass for the Canonisation of St Carlo Acutis on 13 September 2025
As we entered St Peter’s Square for the Canonisation Mass we were greeted with wonderful images of our two new saints-to-be: Piergiorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis.
There were two huge portraits of the young men fashioned into tapestries which adorned the front of the Basilica.
As I looked up at Carlo’s portrait, two thoughts came immediately to mind.
He was pictured wearing a backpack.
His mother Antonia often says, 'There is something appropriate about him being depicted often with a bag on his back – because he was a traveller, a young man always on the move.'
The second thought was about Antonia herself.
She tells how, when Carlo was dying and she slept alongside his bed on a mattress, she had a vivid dream.
She dreamt she was in a church with St Francis of Assisi next to her; and, in the vault of the church appeared a huge image of Carlo; and St Francis told her, 'Carlo will be important in the Church.'
She said that message gave her deep consolation when Carlo died a few days later.
There seems something very poignant in the fact that it was to Our Lady of Dolours that she and Andrea brought their little boy to be baptised in 1991.
Because the Dolours are the Sorrows which Our Lady, like Antonia, would suffer at different moments of her Son’s short life.
For Mary, the first of these was when she and St Joseph presented the baby Jesus in the temple; and Simeon prophesied that a sword would pierce her heart.
There was no such premonition for Antonia.
That was to come later.
But she says, with hindsight, that she thinks the name of the church was prophetic in the way it pointed to how she and Andrea would both, like Mary, drink from the bitter cup of the premature loss of a son.
For now we can focus just on the joy which must have been in the hearts of Antonia and Andrea when whey they brought the two-week-old Carlo to present him to the Lord here in this baptismal font.
Since the earliest centuries, the Church has described baptism as the gateway to life in the Spirit.
Carlo himself was familiar with the idea: he wrote, in his notes for catechising, that baptism 'opens the door of salvation to a soul as it revests it with divine life.'
I am reminded of it whenever I see the gates in front of Carlo’s font; and imagine his young parents leading him from this font out into the world to begin his life as a Christian.
How he embraced that life!
It was surely the Spirit who gave him the desire to visit Jesus in the tabernacles of churches from such a young age; to request Holy Communion much earlier than his peers; and to choose to go to Mass every day.
We had a beautiful Mass of Thanksgiving in St Peter’s Basilica the day after the Canonisation.
As I listened to Carlo’s father read, and watched his parents come forward for Holy Communion, I thought how wonderful it is that it was Carlo’s love for the Eucharist which brought them back, by their own admission, to the practice of the faith.
Antonia often says, 'Carlo was my little Saviour.'
The words we hear today on the lips of Jesus, Carlo believed fully – when Jesus says, 'whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life.'
'The Eucharist is my highway to heaven,' was the way he expressed it.
He used to say he couldn’t understand how people could queue for hours to hear a rock band but that no one would be waiting to enter a church to be with Jesus.
St Irenaeus was famous for saying, 'The glory of God is a human being fully alive.'
Carlo understood from a very young age that being fully alive means that you walk this life with Jesus.
He filled so much into his life that he needed an agenda even as a teenager.
On the left-hand page he put all his activities; on the right – against every entry, he had written, 'We have seen his glory!'
With extraordinary maturity, he told his parents, after he’d made his First Holy Communion, 'To be united with Jesus, this is my programme for life.'
His life was indeed very full.
He loved his sport – the soccer, the swimming, the karate; his music: he taught himself the saxophone; his Spiderman movies, his Playstation; his dogs.
He received his first computer at nine; and was immediately asking his mother to buy him books on how to code.
But he rationed his time on gaming to just one hour a week.
The rest of his time he spent researching Eucharistic miracles – to create the most extraordinary website, a site which is still up and available online.
The motivation for this website was to help others believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Most Holy Eucharist.
He wanted to help people believe the truth in the words we hear from the lips of Jesus today: 'unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.'
But he was equally convinced you need to help your neighbour.
One of his favourite sayings was from St Mother Theresa: 'Many talk about the poor,' she would say, 'but few talk to the poor.'
He knew the names of all the poor people in the locality.
He organised the garage at home to be full of sleeping bags and hats and gloves for those who slept on the streets.
'What do you think?' he would say. 'Is God more pleased with a service like this, generous and tireless, to the least ones of this world, or with prayer?'
I do believe Saint Carlo is a wonderful teacher for any of us who seek to deepen our following of Jesus.
He teaches us how to live.
He teaches us also how to die.
He teaches us that this life is but a preparation for the next – that the most important thing in this life is that we prepare ourselves to go and be with Jesus in the next.
Life in the Spirit, he was convinced, is to be found through regular reception of the sacraments of Holy Communion, of Reconciliation.
The way he expressed it was to say, 'How is it that people give so much attention to their bodies but none to their souls?'
'In front of the sun, you get a tan. In front of the Eucharist, you become a Saint!'
He read in his own body a premonition of his death.
When his body ballooned to 70 Kg, he recorded a video in which he says to camera, 'Sono destinato a morire. I’m destined to die young.'
His mother found the video pasted to his computer desktop: she thinks he left it there for her to find after his death.
The courage with which he faced death was remarkable.
As soon as he became ill, he told his parents he was going to offer this sickness for the Pope and for the Church.
'I’m not getting out of here,' he warned his mother.
Each of us has to go to Golgotha, he’d told his parents only a little while before.
He showed he understood Paul’s words – the same words that we hear addressed on Easter night - to the Romans, when he tells them that 'all of us who have been baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death.'
Carlo was convinced that 'if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.'
The journey St Carlo made from out through the gates of this baptistery to death in Milan was brief – and yet so full!
The fruits were wonderfully evident at his funeral – where the church was filled not only with his family and school-friends but also countless immigrants and poor people from the locality.
Fruits continue to be borne through the many miracles which have been worked by God through Carlo’s intercession – miracles thoroughly and painstakingly scrutinised to the point that Pope Francis knew he could confidently confirm the undoubted sanctity of this young pilgrim.
That sanctity Pope Leo seemed overjoyed to affirm as he stood before St Peter’s and announced, 'We declare and define Blessed Carlo Acutis to be a Saint and enroll him among the Saints, decreeing that he is to be venerated as such by the whole Church.'
So Carlo is given to the Church, given to every member of the Church - if we would only call on his intercession - to be a companion on our way through life.
Carlo used to say that heaven has always been waiting for us.
We shouldn’t hesitate to ask his prayers that he might help us make the journey he made from this font and be there to welcome us when we reach the other side – to join him and all the saints in the joy of eternal life with God.
