“Computer geek” was held up by Pope Francis as a model for youth in navigating the world of the internetThe postulator for the canonization cause of the young Carlo Acutis told an Italian TV station this week that he is aware the body of the Servant of God was reported to be found incorrupt.
Nicola Gori told Tv2000 on April 8 that “the body of Carlo Acutis was intact, according to what I’ve been told.”
Acutis died of leukemia in 2006. He was a great devotee of the Eucharist and Pope Francis has praised him as an inspiration for young people, most recently in his exhortation for young people Christ Is Alive:
… It is true that the digital world can expose you to the risk of self-absorption, isolation and empty pleasure. But don’t forget that there are young people even there who show creativity and even genius. That was the case with the Venerable Carlo 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.
Carlo didn’t fall into the trap. He saw that many young people, wanting to be different, really end up being like everyone else, running after whatever the powerful set before them with the mechanisms of consumerism and distraction. In this way they do not bring forth the gifts the Lord has given them; they do not offer the world those unique personal talents that God has given to each of them. As a result, Carlo said, “everyone is born as an original, but many people end up dying as photocopies”. Don’t let that happen to you!
Below is Aleteia’s original report from January about the initial finding of the incorrupt body:
The vice-postulator of the canonization cause of Venerable Carlo Acutis announced Wednesday that the youth’s body has been found to be incorrupt. Carlo died of leukemia at age 15 in 2006.
The vice postulator, Father Marcelo Tenorio, shared the news on social media. He revealed that he’d seen the pictures but that he couldn’t share them.
The priest said that the news had been communicated to him by Carlo’s mother: “Dear ones, I received today from the mother of Carlo Acutis the wonderful news that the body of the venerable youth, who died giving his life for Pope Benedict XVI, is INTACT.”
He also announced that the body would be taken to the Capuchin monastery in Assisi, and eventually taken to the old church of St. Mary Major in Assisi.
One of Carlo’s 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.
Father Tenorio’s original Facebook post was later taken down and a subsequent post said that the announcement was meant to be personal, and shouldn’t be considered an official declaration of the miracle.
The discovery was made during the exhumation of Carlo’s body that is part of the recognition of his remains by the Congregation for Saints’ Causes, in the development of the canonization cause.
UPDATE: The postulator of the cause, Nicola Gori, asked that the medical exams be awaited before something definitive can be said regarding the state of the body of the young Carlo.
“Any judgement on the state of the body’s preservation is premature as the necessary examinations by medical personnel are currently underway,” he said.
Father Tenorio further walked back his original statement, insisting that he has no “canonical or scientific” authority to officially determine the body as incorrupt.
His role in the canonization cause is a temporary one, as the case of a possible miracle attributed to Carlo’s intercession is being examined in his native Brazil.
