Acutis, who died in 2006 at age 15 after a battle with leukemia, spent his short life sharing the gospel in his own way over the internet and social media. He became known in some Catholic circles as the “patron saint of the internet”, the “cyberapostle of the Eucharist” or “an influencer for God”.

After teaching himself computer programming at a young age, Acutis designed a website to document miracles.

“Carlo was able to use social media and especially the internet as an ‘influencer’ for God,” said Acutis’s mother, Antonia Salzano.

“Obviously, being a boy of our times, he experienced what all the young people of his generation have — so, computers, video games, football, school, friends,” she continued, but “he managed to transform it into the extraordinary.”

While he loved playing video games, including Pokémon and Mario Kart, Salzano noted that her son limited this pastime to one hour a week.

“Because he understood that they were potentially very harmful, very dangerous, he wanted to be the master of these means, not a slave,” she said.

“… Carlo reminds us of what is most important. The most important thing is to put God in the first place in our life.”

“He knew how to use the new communications technology to transmit the Gospel, to communicate values and beauty.” – Pope Francis

Pope Francis echoed these sentiments, saying about Acutis, “Carlo was well aware that the whole apparatus of communications, advertising and social networking can be used to lull us, to make us addicted to consumerism and buying the latest thing on the market, obsessed with our free time, caught up in negativity. Yet he knew how to use the new communications technology to transmit the Gospel, to communicate values and beauty.”

Acutis was also known for seeking out ways of “helping poor, older and disabled people, and refugees,” reports the New York Times.

His mother told the Times: “On the way to school, he would stop to chat with people about their problems, she said. He took meals and sleeping bags to homeless people and knew many by name.

“At Carlo’s funeral, the church overflowed with people whose lives he had touched, she said.”

The stained-glass window in the Molfetta church, inaugurated last May, is designed to be a reminder for other young people of Actutis’s belief that “happiness is looking towards God and sadness is looking only towards oneself.”