THE witness of Carlo Acutis, the London-born Italian teenager who was beatified in a ceremony at Assisi on Saturday, is a powerful example for today's young people, Pope Francis has said.
It shows that "true happiness is found by putting God in first place and serving Him in our brothers and sisters, especially the least", said the Pope as the 15-year-old, who died from leukaemia in 2006, was set on the path to sainthood.
He "understood the needs of his time, because he saw the face of Christ in the weakest", said the Pope of the first 'millennial' to be beatified.
The "new young Blessed", as Francis called him during Sunday's Angelus, was a computer expert and is celebrated in particular for his 'digital holiness' - a wholly contemporary theme that the Pope has spoken about at length.
His new encyclical Fratelli Tutti warns of the dangers of social media, for example.
"Because he understood that they were potentially very harmful, very dangerous, he wanted to be the master of these means, not a slave," Carlo Acutis's mother has said.
