He died age 15 of leukemia and is now on the path to sainthood

On Thursday, November 24, 2016, Cardinal Angelo Scola closed the diocesesan phase in the canonization process for Carlo Acutis, a 15-year-old Italian boy who died in 2006 of leukemia. He was a well-loved teenager who devoted himself to prayer and daily Mass as well as computer programming, film editing, website creation, editing and layout of comics.

One of his most significant computer ventures was cataloguing all the Eucharistic miracles of the world. He started the project when he was 11 years old and wrote at the time, “The more Eucharist we receive, the more we will become like Jesus, so that on this earth we will have a foretaste of Heaven.” He then asked his parents to start taking him to all the places of the Eucharistic miracles, and two and half years later the project was completed.

Acutis once said, “To always be close to Jesus, that’s my life plan.” In his brief life on earth he achieved that goal and remained close to Jesus in whatever he did, whether it was praying in front of the Blessed Sacrament for hours, creating websites, or going to school like every other teenager.