Vatican City. On 7 September 2025, in a St. Peter’s Square full of 80,000 celebrating faithful, the young Carlo Acutis and Pier Giorgio Frassati were canonized in the Eucharistic Celebration presided over by Pope Leo XIV, and concelebrated by Claudio Giuliodori, general ecclesiastical assistant of Italian Catholic Action; Monsignor Mario Delpini, Archbishop of Milan; and Monsignor Domenico Sorrentino, Bishop of the Diocese of Assisi.
In the square, in addition to the Cardinals, Bishops, and Postulators, there were Carlo’s parents and his twin sister and brother, Francesca and Michele (who read the First Reading in English); Pier Giorgio’s family, Valeria Vargas Valverde, miraculously cured by Carlo; ecclesial and civil authorities, including the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella. About 2,000 were the concelebrating priests.
Before the start of the Celebration, the Holy Father, at his first Canonizations since he was elected, pleasantly surprised the Square with a brief view “outside the program”, to greet and welcome everyone, especially the numerous young speakers, scout groups, and youth associations, members of Catholic Action, the FUCI and Dominicans, of which Frassati was a member, coming from Italy and all over the world:
“Today is a beautiful celebration for all of Italy, for the whole Church, for the whole world! .. a day of much joy!” – said the Pope – “And I wanted to greet above all the many young people who have come for this holy Mass! Truly a blessing from the Lord, to find ourselves together with all of you who have come from different Countries. It is truly a gift of faith that we want to share.” And he encouraged all to live the celebration with prayer and with a heart open to grace. “We all feel in our hearts the same thing that Pier Giorgio and Carlo experienced, this love for Jesus Christ, especially in the Eucharist, but also in the poor, in brothers and sisters. All of you too, all of us, are called to be saints.”
After the initial rites, the Celebration came to life with the request (petitio) to the Holy Father and the presentation of the biographies of the two candidates by Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, followed by the litanies, to invoke the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the Saints.
Moving was the reading of the Canonization formula with which Pope Leo XIV inscribed them in the Roll of Saints, “establishing that throughout the Church they should be devoutly honored,” followed by the explosion of joy of the faithful.
In the homily, Pope Leo drew from the Readings by recalling the experience of two young men, King Solomon and the rich young man, to encourage adherence to God’s plans, because “life’s greatest risk is to waste it outside of God’s plan.” In the frame of these examples, and two others, “masters in Holiness” – Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Augustine – to whom the Lord gave “a new direction, a new path, a new logic”, the Pope gave prominence to the two new Saints, “a young man of the early twentieth century and an adolescent of our day, both in love with Jesus and ready to give everything for Him.”
Each with his own story, “Pier Giorgio met the Lord through school and church groups, Catholic Action, the Conferences of St. Vincent, the FUCI, the Dominican Third Order, and testified to this with his joy of living and being a Christian in prayer, friendship, charity.” “Carlo, for his part, met Jesus in the family, thanks to his parents, Andrea and Antonia, present here today with his sister and brother, Francesca and Michele. And at school, he too, and especially in the Sacraments celebrated in the parish community… naturally integrating prayer, sport, study, and charity into his days as a child and a young boy.”
Both, however, “cultivated love for God and for others through simple means, within everyone’s reach: daily Holy Mass, prayer, especially Eucharistic Adoration”.
The Pontiff concluded with the invitation, addressed above all to young people, “not to waste life, but to orient it upwards and make it a masterpiece. They encourage us with their words, ‘Not me, but God’, said Carlo. And Pier Giorgio, ‘If you have God as the center of all your actions, then you will reach the end’. This is the simple, but winning formula of their holiness. And it is also the testimony that we are called to follow, to enjoy life to the full and go to meet the Lord in the Heavenly feast.”
If Pier Giorgio and Carlo were already not far from the Salesian Charism – Frassati had had Fr. Antonio Cojazzi, SDB, as his tutor and friend (cf. InfoANS), while Acutis, the “first millennial saint”, willingly went to the Basilica of Mary Help of Christians to pray, in particular in front of Saint Dominic Savio, and had included Saint John Bosco in his online exhibition of Eucharistic Miracles. With this event of grace, Saint Carlo and Saint Pier Giorgio officially enter the ranks of Saints, ready to intercede and become even more apostles among their peers and, for educators, models of a full and fulfilled life to be indicated and made known to the young.
The great emotion of these “young” Canonizations will soon be followed by an equally great joy for the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians and for the entire Salesian Family, with the highly anticipated Canonization of Sister Maria Troncatti. It will take place in St. Peter’s Square on 19 October 2025, together with Blessed Ignazio Choukrallah Maloyan, Peter To Rot, Vincenza Maria Poloni, Maria del Monte Carmelo Rendiles Martínez, José Gregorio Hernández Cisneros, and Bartolo Longo.
