Carlo Acutis beatified

A British-born Italian teenager who dedicated his short life to spreading the faith online and helping the poor was beatified yesterday in a ceremony in Assisi. That leaves him just one miracle away from becoming the world's first millennial saint. Internet and computer-mad youngster Carlo Acutis, who died of leukemia in 2006 aged 15, was placed on the path to sainthood after the Vatican ruled he had miraculously saved another boy's life in 2013, a Brazilian boy suffering from a rare pancreatic disease. Acutis, dubbed "the cyberapostle of the Eucharist", was born in London to Italian parents, and moved to Milan with them as a young boy. Carlo was religious from a young age, despite his mother saying his family had rarely attended church. When he wasn't writing computer programs or playing football, he created a website to catalog miracles and took care of websites for some local Catholic organizations. While still in elementary school, Acutis taught himself to code using a university computer science textbook and then learned how to edit videos and create animation. Carlo used the internet in service of the Gospel, to reach as many people as possible. He was known in his neighborhood for his kindness to those living on society's margins. With his savings, he bought sleeping bags for homeless people and in the evening he brought them hot drinks. He also volunteered at a soup kitchen in Milan. The Assisi bishop said that a soup kitchen for the poor would be opened in Acutis's honor. When he died, at the funeral, the church was full of poor people. Everyone else wondered what they were doing there. Well, Carlo used to help them in secret. The family knew about it, because his mother would go with him, since he was only 15 years old. He would give them sleeping bags and food, which is why they wanted to attend the funeral. Should Acutis later be credited with the second miracle necessary for sainthood, supporters have suggested he could become the Patron Saint of the internet -- though there already is one, 7th-century scholar St. Isidore de Seville.