The Catholic Church is preparing to canonise the first gamer saint, which means that soon, a school could be named after someone who was really into Halo. If they’re not blasting ‘Blow Me Away’ by Breaking Benjamin as he’s named a saint, I don’t want it.
The Vatican recently announced that it had approved the canonisation of Italian teenager Carlo Acutis, the first “millennial saint.” Acutis was born in 1991 and died in 2006 at 15 years old from Leukaemia. He was born in London to Italian parents before moving to Milan, Italy for the remainder of his life, where he regularly volunteered to help the homeless and the poor with money saved from his weekly allowance.
Acutis reportedly enjoyed playing video games including Halo (he probably really liked all the Prophets in-game), Mario, and Pokemon, and bought a PlayStation at eight years old – although his mother claims that he capped his game time to just one hour a week as he was wary of becoming addicted. He’s also known for his creation of a website which documented reports of Catholic miracles and Marian apparitions – an act that has led to him being nicknamed “God’s influencer.”
Acutis has been in the process of canonisation for a number of years, a multi-step process that requires candidates to have two miracles attributed to them alongside evidence of faith in their life. Generally, the path to becoming a saint is a slow one – sometimes taking decades or even hundreds of years in some cases – but Acutis’ popularity online amongst Catholics (most likely thanks to his notoriety amongst younger Catholics and online presence) has seen the process move significantly faster.
Acutis was declared “Venerable” by the Catholic Church in 2018, before being beatified (declared “Blessed”) in 2020 after reports of his first miracle were verified. He reportedly healed a Brazilian boy with a birth defect that led to him being unable to consume food normally, when the boy’s mother prayed to Acutis for assistance. A second miracle has since been attributed to the gamer saint-to-be, with reports of a Costa Rican girl who was healed from significant head trauma after her mother prayed at Acutis’ tomb in Italy. Now that both miracles have been recognised by the Church, the first millennial saint has been approved for canonisation, and will likely be named a saint during the 2025 Jubilee.
“As I did, you too can become holy,” his mother Antonia Salzano said in May (via CNN). “Nevertheless, [with] all the media, the technologies, it seems sometimes that holiness is something that belongs to the past. Instead, holiness is also something nowadays in this modern time.”
When Acutis is named a saint, it will make him the first millennial saint of the Catholic Church – and by extension, most likely the first saint to have been a gamer. Praise be to Master Chief, et cetera. The next step in the process requires the Pope to formally declare him a saint, which will grant the teen a feast day, and the honours of parishes and schools being able to be named after him. Just imagine, kids could soon be attending a Catholic school named after a saint that probably lamented the Fall of Reach.
Jokes aside, we pay our respects to a fallen gamer who sounds like he was a stand-up guy in life. May he rest in peace.
Image: Vatican Pool via Getty Images / Bungie / Kotaku Australia
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