Chicago just got a little holier.
And no one is more excited than the folks at Blessed Carlo Acutis Parish — now St. Carlo Acutis Parish, the only parish in North America named for the Catholic Church’s first millennial saint.
On Sunday it hosted a celebration in honor of Acutis’ canonization, part of festivities that will last until the anniversary of his death Oct. 12.
An all-woman mariachi group, Mariachi Sirenas, performed on the steps at St. Hedwig Church in Bucktown, part of St. Acutis Parish, as several hundred people filed into Mass on Sunday morning. A portrait of Acutis and a soccer ball were carried by the Mass procession moving down the aisles. Parishioners wore soccer jerseys along with their Sunday best amid a sea of gold and blue ribbons waving in the air.
“It was a sign of the youthfulness of the church and Carlo Acutis as an example of living the gospel in the modern age,” the Rev. Ed Howe told the Sun-Times before the Mass. “And our vision is to share Carlo Acutis with everyone else.”
During the service, Howe, pastor of St. Carlo Acutis Parish, blessed two 150-pound bronze busts of Acutis, who is nicknamed the “saint next door.” The busts were created by sculptor Timothy Schmalz, who made the busts at the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis last year and donated them to the parish. They’re set to be placed at each of the parish’s worship sites — after a party where Acutis’ favorite snack, Nutella, will be served.
Chicago native Pope Leo XIV declared the then-15-year-old computer whiz a saint about 3 a.m. Sunday Chicago time.
Acutis, who died in 2006 of leukemia, was canonized during an open-air Mass in St. Peter’s Square before an estimated 80,000 people Sunday during the first saint-making Mass of Leo’s papacy; the event had been postponed after the death of Pope Francis this year.
The web programmer’s specialty was cataloging miracles in a user-friendly way to make them accessible to younger Catholics. A corresponding physical project visited Cristo Rey Parish in Little Village last year and helped earn Acutis the nickname “God’s influencer.”
Pope Francis confirmed Acutis’ first miracle in 2020, the same year he was “beatified,” or blessed by the church: A 4-year-old boy from Brazil was healed from a rare pancreatic disease after praying before a picture of Acutis in 2013. Francis attributed a second miracle to the teen last year: A woman was healed from head trauma after her mother prayed at Acutis’ shrine in Assisi, Italy, in 2022.
Leo said St. Acutis — as well as another popular Italian figure who died young a century earlier, Pier Giorgio Frassati, who was also canonized Sunday — created “masterpieces” out of their lives by dedicating them to God.
“The greatest risk in life is to waste it outside of God’s plan,” Leo said in his homily. The new saints “are an invitation to all of us, especially young people, not to squander our lives, but to direct them upwards and make them masterpieces.”
Jim Szczepanski, 77, has been attending services at the Bucktown church since he was born. He grew up across the street and still attends regularly despite moving to Elgin.
When his lifelong parish was renamed for Acutis in 2022, he didn’t know the newest saint. Now he hopes more young people find out as he did because he says the pews get emptier every year.
“This is nice, a young guy, a teenager. Maybe the young people will come back to the church,” Szczepanski said. “I hope so, I could tell a lot of people moved away. Our church used to be packed on Sundays. Now? It’s not that big of a crowd anymore.”
Luckily for Szczepanski, it seems St. Acutis is already answering his prayers. Howe said the children at the schools attached to the parish have been learning about Acutis, and other younger folks made the trip to the church to celebrate.
Lorenzo Vera, a 30-year-old South Side resident, first heard of Carlo Acutis in Rome when he was living abroad studying computer science.
Sunday was Vera’s first time at St. Acutis, but he felt a need to make the time to celebrate a saint just four years older than him who engaged in faith through their shared interest in computers.
“I found a deep connection to him,” Vera said. “It’s actually mind-blowing, for a person outside religion, they think saints are older relics of biblical times. But saints can pop up in any generation. … You can still spread the message of God through technology, and I find that very inspiring,”
Contributing: AP, David Struett