While many teenagers today may aspire to become social media influencers, London-born Carlo Acutis earned himself the remarkable nickname ‘God’s Influencer’.
This moniker was thanks to his main tech legacy: a multilingual website documenting Eucharistic miracles recognised by the Catholic Church.
Now a documentary detailing the life Acutis – who died at just 15 of leukaemia in 2006 and was canonised in September 2025 by Pope Leo – has become a major hit in Italy.
‘My Name Is Carlo,’ which lifts the lid on the young saint, was watched by nearly 4.3million people who tuned into Italy’s Canale 5 on Sunday.
This number represented a nearly 30 per cent share of the total audience, with local media reporting that, at its peak, 40 per cent of all of Italy’s TV viewers were tuned into the documentary.
Acutis – who in the documentary is played by Italian actor Samuele Carrino – was born in Westminster on May 3, 1991, to a wealthy family who moved back to Milan just a few months later.
The teenager was made a saint by the Catholic Church following the confirmation of two miracles.
The first was in 2020, when the Church recognised the curing of a child’s pancreatic disease as the work of the teenage saint.
The tomb of Saint Carlo Acutis, who died at 15, in the Church of Saint Mary Major in Assisi, Italy
After a Brazilian mother prayed to Saint Acutis to cure her son’s condition, she kissed a clothing relic of his. Immediately after the mass, the boy told his mother he felt better.
Tests by doctors later showed he had a healthy pancreas – it had completely changed and healed into a normal state.
The second miracle was recognised in 2024. This incident saw a Costa Rican woman who had fallen off her bicycle in Italy and suffered a brain haemorrhage miraculously cured after her mother prayed at Acutis’s tomb.
That same day, the woman – who doctors said had little chance of surviving her injuries – began to breathe on her own.
The following day, she was able to walk independently. Doctors who investigated the incident said all evidence of the haemorrhage had disappeared.
More than a million people are estimated to have made a pilgrimage to the Italian hilltop town of Assisi where the teenager’s body lies, preserved in wax.
The body of the saint, which is dressed in a tracksuit and trainers, was exhumed in 2019 and put on display in a glass tomb where it has remained.
Acutis, born to an Italian mother and a half-English, half-Italian banker father, had an ardent faith, though his parents were not particularly devout.
He grew up in Milan, where he attended mass daily and had a reputation for kindness to bullied children and homeless people, bringing sleeping bags and Tupperware filled with food to the latter.
His empathy and concern for the poor were so moving that, even as a young child, Acutis inspired adults to join the Church, including his au pair Rajesh Mohur, who converted from Hinduism to Catholicism.
In Milan, he took care of his parish website and later that of a Vatican-based academy where he spread the message of Catholicism.
At age 11, he read captivating stories about wine turning to blood in Croatian castles and how in Colombia priests stopped approaching tsunamis by holding up reliquaries (containers used to house and protect religious relics).
In the documentary ‘My Name Is Carlo’, which was watched by nearly 4.3million people, Acutis is played by Italian actor Samuele Carrino
He would then look up these tales and post them on his website, which he had designed to document miracles and stories about saints.
Antonia Salzano, his mother, said her son had a ‘special relationship’ with God from an early age, even though her family was not religious.
Aged seven, Acutis wrote: ‘My life plan is to be always close to Jesus.’
It was a commitment he would carry with him throughout his life before it was cut short by cancer of the blood in 2006.
Carlo’s diagnosis with leukaemia in October 2006 came as a horrifying shock.
The disease can take several forms but affects the blood cells in bone marrow.
Symptoms include tiredness, bruising and bleeding, repeated infections and high temperatures, per Blood Cancer UK.
The disease overwhelmingly affects young people. While it is not currently curable, it is possible to treat.
In spite of his diagnosis, Carlo reassured his parents: ‘I’m happy to die because I’ve lived my life without wasting even a minute of it doing things that wouldn’t have pleased God.’
