A human river of faithful—from young people to nuns, from families to scout groups—flooded St. Peter’s Square for the canonization of two young Italians: Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis. The first canonization of Pope Leo was a celebration, and he used the occasion to launch an appeal to the youth: “The saints Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis are an invitation to all of us, especially to the young, not to waste our lives, but to orient them upward and to make of them a masterpiece.”
Over 80,000 pilgrims packed the square. Italian President Sergio Mattarella was in the front row. They arrived from Turin and all the circles of Catholic Action, which was Frassati’s point of reference, as well as from Milan and Assisi, the cities of Acutis. But the faithful, who came to Rome to honor these two young, lay Italian saints, arrived from all over the world, including a small group from the United Arab Emirates which, starting today in honor of the two, will officially have its own Catholic youth group.
Present were descendants of the Turin saint, who died exactly one hundred years ago, and the entire family (father, mother, and siblings) of Carlo, the so-called “influencer of God” for expressing his faith not only through mass and rosaries but also by building websites. Parents attending the canonization of their child had only been seen once before in history, 75 years ago for that of Maria Goretti.
In an unscheduled appearance before the celebration, Pope Leo came to the square to say, “Today is a beautiful feast for all of Italy, for the entire Church, and for the whole world.” He recalled that these young men encountered Christ in the Eucharist but also “in the poor, in their brothers and sisters.” Frassati, the son of Turin’s high society—his father was the director of the newspaper *La Stampa*—would travel around in the early 1900s with a cart to distribute all he could to the poor. Carlo, the millennial buried in Assisi in his sweatshirt and sneakers, gave to the neediest what he managed to save from his allowance. For both, a sudden illness put an early ‘end’ to their lives, though all witnesses highlight the serenity and joy with which they faced this final trial.
“People often speak of a lost youth, incapable of looking—or letting others look—to the future with hope. In the canonization of Frassati and Acutis, there is a living and concrete rebuttal of this cliché,” said the Undersecretary to the Presidency of the Council, Alfredo Mantovano, at the end of the ceremony. For the President of the Chamber of Deputies, Lorenzo Fontana, “the lives of these two new saints have so much to say to our time and are the answer to the young’s thirst for values.”
However, a shadow of controversy fell over the festivities. The *Times of Israel*, speaking in particular of Acutis, highlighted that “behind this celebration lies a disturbing legacy: the miracles promoted online by Acutis are rooted in centuries-old antisemitic myths that have fueled hatred and violence against Jewish communities.” According to the Israeli paper, “although Acutis avoided explicitly mentioning Jews in these narratives, referring instead to ‘desecrators’ or ‘wrongdoers,’ the historical sources he drew from, including church records and devotional literature, often identified the culprits as Jews.” The paper further stated that “these stories helped root antisemitic stereotypes in the Christian imagination, inspiring art, relics, processions, and holidays. Executions, pogroms, or mass expulsions of Jews often followed accusations of sacrilege.”
The day closed with a new appeal from Pope Leo for peace, especially for the Holy Land and Ukraine: “I repeat to those in government: listen to the voice of conscience. The apparent victories achieved with weapons, sowing death and destruction, are in fact defeats and never bring peace and security. God does not want war, God wants peace, and God supports those who work to escape the spiral of hatred and walk the path of dialogue.”