Venerable Carlo Acutis and his love for the Eucharist

Venerable Carlo Acutis, an Italian teen whose beatification Pope Francis approved in 2020, is known for his gift for computer programming, but how he used those skills is what makes him an example of holiness, according to the postulator of his sainthood cause.

Carlo is known to have called the Eucharist his “highway to heaven.”

“We know about Carlo that one of his great pillars was the Eucharist and the other was the Madonna, the Virgin,” Nicola Gori, the postulator of Acutis’ cause for sainthood, told EWTN News.

From his adolescence, Carlo prayed the rosary daily and in addition to other devotions, frequently spent time in Eucharistic adoration. He said when “we face the sun we become tan... but when we place ourselves in front of the Eucharistic Jesus we become saints.”

Carlo died from a brain hemorrhage caused by leukemia in 2006 at the age 15. The summer after his 14th birthday, he spent researching Eucharistic miracles and creating a website to catalog and share the information with others.

“Carlo wanted people to approach the Eucharist and for this he used the internet,” Gori said. “One summer before his death, he went to look for where great Eucharistic miracles occurred in the world, those recognized by the Church, from the first Christian era to the present day.”

The website Carlo created was the genesis of The Eucharistic Miracles of the World, an international exhibition which highlights such occurrences.

Carlo, Gori said, was concerned by people growing distant to the Church and the sacraments, and he wanted to bring them back.

His website “is a call to shake consciences; say let’s go back to the essentials, let’s go back to filling the churches,” Gori explained, noting that beginning in his childhood Carlo brought people to Mass and to receive the sacraments with him.