I am not much into the veneration of now St. Carlo Acutis. Not my age group, I guess. However, when I see the videos and photos of the crowds of people who do venerate him, I cannot deny that there is a strong devotion to him, which is necessary for a cause for beatification and canonization. This was a pious and holy young man who seems to be inspiring many young people to live good Christian lives.
QUAERITUR: What kind of man do you have to be to loathe St Carol Acutis?
Mr. Cricket does. He is at it again.
For the record: Andrea Grillo, progressive liturgist, says St Carlo Acutis’s ‘holiness kit’ is “embarrassing” & “infantile” for suggesting things like:
– daily Rosary
– daily Bible reading
– Eucharistic Adoration
– weekly Confession
– prayer to one’s guardian angel— Matthew Hazell (@M_P_Hazell) September 7, 2025
Mr. Cricket wanted bishops to put an end to the display at parishes of St Carlo’s Eucharistic miracles exhibit (miracolieucaristici.org/en/Liste/list.…) becuase, you know against the “true meaning” of the Eucharist, blah blah.
I like a comment in a Rorate Tweet.
“Carlo Acutis’ greatest miracle was unmasking Andrea Grillo.”
If for nothing else, I am beginning really to like this young saint.
Dr. K has a point to make. I suspect that, often, the hatred of the TLM and those who desire it, stem from certain personal issues.
Let’s not forget that Andrea Grillo, the most outspoken critic of the TLM and advocate of ‘Traditionis Custodes’, is a notorious dissenter from the Catholic Church’s teaching on sexual morality.https://t.co/zbS2Yw010D
— Peter Kwasniewski (@DrKwasniewski) June 18, 2024
The pontifical institute where he teaches disagrees with Mr. Cricket about Carlo Acutis.
The Pontifical Atheneum of Saint Anselm in Rome distances itself from the words of Andrea Grillo, Professor of Sacramental Theology at the university, disparaging the Blessed Carlo Acutis and Eucharistic miracles. https://t.co/CMOU9ceXfi
— Catholic Sat (@CatholicSat) June 25, 2025
Damian Thompson has a characteristically mordent commentary on Mr. Cricket. HERE
What does Grillo think about people? Here is the photo which HE uses.
Back atchya.
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I have had a devotion to St. Pier Giorgio Frassati and St. Carlo Acutis for several years, and I am delighted to see them canonized. Like St. Teresa of Calcutta (whose feast day was Friday), they did small things with great joy and served God every day. I can model the very small and insignificant things I do on their examples. And I can also laugh at myself and have fun doing it, as they did.
The people who condescendingly belittle our good saints and even those of us who simply keep trying to please God every day strike me as recognizing that they themselves are lacking in some way. They have to drag others down in order to feel better about themselves. I do not express myself well, but perhaps you understand what I am saying, Father.
Sometimes, there is a lot of backbiting that goes on when our fellow Catholics do well and achieve greatness. We feel compelled to look for flaws where none exist.
And sometimes, it is good to simply be happy for another good example to follow, someone who is just a regular guy or regular girl who uses their life to live for God. And there’s not a thing wrong with that.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Bosco: Please explain your comment.
Some years ago, I was asked to help with confirmation catechesis in my local parish. During the deanery training course, we were asked what forms of prayer we might envourage with the young adult candidates. When I suggested the rosary and eucharistic adoration, I was greeted with patronising disdain by the cleric in charge and assured that “we’ve grown out of such things these days”. My response was, “Well, perhaps it’s time we grew back into them!”. I was fairly quickly sidelined after that. Maybe the times they are a- changing again at last, and Signor Grillo may find himself increasingly sidelined (please God) now he has so clearly misread the new signs of the times.
Your question, Father is ‘What kind of man do you have to be to loathe St Carol Acutis?’ My reply that even a broken clock is right twice a day was intended to suggest that not all visceral and/or intuitive responses are unwarranted. Some prove out over time and some don’t.
This newest Saint has been marketed much too hard. Too much Madison Avenue. There were quite a few young men and women enamored of Elvis Presley in his day. He even sang gospel music. He was a simple soul. He had a good agent.
My biggest concern regarding the tendency of the modern Church’s superfluousity of raising to the altars, is always “where is the cultus for this individual?” So I am very happy that St. Carlo Acutis has a large number of individuals devoted to him.
We need to be more accepting of holiness when it is found, rather than trying to match real life to our mental models. It is faith seeking understanding, not understanding seeking faith, after all.
I will say is that out of all the people I’ve met, with one exception, they all tell me they like Carlo Acutis since he did modern things: “He was on the internet”, “He played video games”, “He played Pokemon”, etcetera. Very rarely do I hear anyone ever speak of holiness or piety. Rather I hear reasons like “bro, Carlo Acutis played Pokemon” “Dude, that’s so awesome that a saint played Pokemon!” with the implication that is now okay to do such things out of moderation since a saint did them. It can be a slippery slope.
I admit I am one of those who hold Carlo Acutis under skepticism, and it is for such reasons why. If someone, as the one exception I mentioned does, has personal devotion to him based out of reason of piety and holiness, good for them!
I have always been pretty indifferent to St. Carlo in general, but annoyed at the whole “finally, a saint who wore jeans and played video games!” rhetoric, because… he isn’t a saint *because* of those things. He is a saint because of precisely the things that irk Grillo so much (his solid Eucharistic and Marian piety). But then, I’ve had a devotion to St. Pier Giorgio for many years now, which complicates things, because I’ve talked to several people who were very hyped about St. Carlo and when I started talking to them about St. Pier Giorgio they just stared at me with boredom. It has felt very symptomatic of an age where anything that isn’t *current* and *brand new* is seen as completely obsolete, or at the very least as extremely distant, grey and washed out (which, considering we’ve only just turned the centennial of his death is… something). This has been compounded with the fact that Catholic media has continued to ignore him for the most part even after the canonization dates were merged, which was also a bitter pill for me, personally.
I acknowledge these are mainly me problems that have nothing to do with St. Carlo himself at all.
If I ever won the lottery, I would have a schola follow him around Rome singing this nonstop:
https://youtu.be/O_EsMD6oDvI
Well I hate to admit that I have something in common with this man, but … I’m having a really hard time with St. Carlo Acutis as well. It’s like at some point someone figured out that religious orders were just lobbying to canonize their own members (which they do, by the way …) and the Church started hunting down people to canonize that fit other niches; married people, single people, young people etc. It all seems so … contrived.
I’m not too attached to St. Carlo Acutis. But a couple of things stood out to me: 1. He revived his mother’s faith. 2. Through his witness, their hindu au pair converted to the Catholic faith.
Two small things that meant a lot.
I’m not super fan of st Carlo A. Nothing against him, of course. But I find very very depressing that a man like this Grillo has any teaching position in the Church, and that he is promoted as a prophet of a new era of enlightened Christianity.
But somehow he reminded me that I should pray more to my Guardian Angel. And his.
Not fussed about St Carlo Acutis; in my opinion “too soon”. But, he was seemingly a pious young man and devoted to the Eucharist.
Grillo gives me the creeps. Too many of those in the church today.
When I went to Assisi on a pilgrimage two years ago, and first learned about Saint Carlo Acutis and saw his relics, my first reaction was highly skeptical. Like one of the commenters said, the stories of the video games and tennis shoes seemed cloying and manipulative. But when I let things ferment a bit (a good thing to do with saints) and read books about him (I recommend Monsignor Figueiredo’s and Francesco Occhetta’s), my opinion began sharply to change. Somehow he captured my imagination, and my heart. Our Lord says we are supposed to know them by their fruits. As near as I can tell, the fruits of Saint Carlo’s story have been entirely, and indeed dramatically positive. To the contrary, it is really hard to credit the objections of someone who claims his mother wanted him to be a saint too badly (hey, The Economist, I have someone named Monica on line 2), or someone who says that exhortations to daily Rosary and weekly Confession are bad things. From all indications, it seems likelier to me that someone is really irritated that Saint Carlo has been raised to the altars, than that he was raised prematurely.
This is from the Thompson article:
The modernists who seized control of the Church’s liturgy after the Second Vatican Council regarded Eucharistic Adoration as a superstitious relic of the Middle Ages or, worse, sugary 19th-century piety. They and their successors have watched incredulously as a new generation of Catholics have embraced Adoration, falling to their denim-covered knees as the sacrament, encased in a richly ornamented monstrance, processes through the streets.
Having had a parish administrator who was one of these modernists, it is very disheartening to have to bear their scorn daily. But – a least in my case – they have NOTHING upon which to base their scorn but the sneer that “that’s the old way it was done”. Woe to them that they should think the tried and true, the tested and proven, should be held up for admiration! No, what has been is bad by that very fact, out with the old and in with trash and garbage, because that’s NEW. Do they ever recognize they have been sold a bill of goods by Satan? Maybe that’s why they are sourpusses who don’t like anybody?
It bothers me when people say that they only think Saint Carlo Acutis was canonized because he is a modern figure that people can relate to and that he didn’t seem holy. Or that he was not holy because did not work miracles during their lifetime, or fall into ecstasy.
This is a misinterpretation of holiness. Working miracles during one’s life is not necessarily a sign of holiness, especially because it is usually a charismatic grace, and charismatic graces do not indicate that a person is holy. What indicates whether a person is holy is the presence of the Fruits of the Spirit (charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, modesty, continence, and chastity) which indicate a maturity in the spiritual life.
Another sign of holiness is peacefully accepting one’s death which is a sign of being in the Unitive Way. Saint Carlo Acutis certainly accepted his death at a young age in a peaceful manner.
In addition, God allowed Saint Carlo Acutis to perform miracles after his death, which providentially moved forth his canonization process. This gives proof that he is a Saint in heaven and that God wants him to be a canonized saint.