[The Economist] The Secret Life of the First Millennial Saint

[Gnarwhal]

I wouldn't normally post a secular article but this one's actually pretty good and it's focusing on something that's bothered me for a while: how the Church's canonization process has changed in recent decades. This kind of culminates for me in Carlo Acutis and this article I think makes a lot of very salient points that I've found to be true in my own experiences. Like, if you talk to anyone who's stoked about him, if you ask them why he's gonna be a Saint, they all usually point to the same couple of factoids about him like he was a young dude who made a website. To say nothing of the point that he didn't make the website out of some overflowing sense of piety but it was an assignment given to him.

Another thing the article points out is that his mom has been the primary engine driving the Carlo's cause, which as I understand it, is the whole reason the Church for most of its history waited at least 50 years before even opening a cause.

I think the bar has been lowered too far in the process, JP2 dispensed with the devil's advocate and now they're canonizing people within just a few years of their deaths. My concern is the messaging this sends to Catholics both current and future. Not just about the Church's standards for canonization but also whether they're playing too fast and loose with the doctrines of it to begin with, it could unravel a lot of people's faith in other claims of the Church by extension.

The site has a paywall but you can still view the article for free you just have to navigate through it.

Federico Oldani is a pale, thin analytical man in his early 30s who lives in Milan and works for an Italian aerospace company. He grew up in the city, and at the age of 11 began attending Istituto Marcelline Tommaseo, a private school in an expensive neighbourhood. He quickly became friends with Carlo, a sunny, extroverted boy who shared his passion for fast cars.
...
Carlo never spoke to Oldani about Jesus. Oldani knew that Carlo’s parents were religious and Carlo was culturally Christian – everyone was culturally Christian – but he had no idea Carlo was an ardent believer. In the course of multiple conversations, Federico went back and forth about whether he had known anything at all. Sometimes he said he had an ambient sense Carlo was religious, at other times he said he had small clues he put together later. The hagiographies tell us that faith was the centre of Carlo’s life. His parents may have seen it. But at his Catholic school, his reserve on the subject was so complete that when Carlo told Oldani he was making a website cataloguing miracles, Oldani saw it more as an expression of his friend’s passion for computer programming than anything else.

The secret life of the first millennial saint

The Vatican wants him to be the next Mother Teresa. But what did Carlo Acutis really believe?

www.economist.com

As a bonus, here's the recent Avoiding Babylon episode where they discussed this article: