Carlo Acutis, a 15-year old who died of leukemia in 2006, was canonized as the first Catholic saint of the millennial generation on Sunday in an open-air Mass in St. Peters’ Square. Called "God's Influencer,” Acutis, a self-taught programmer, created a website called Miracoli Eucaristici (Eucharistic Miracles of the World). It was a virtual exhibition documenting 100+ Eucharistic miracles, but his elevation to sainthood rested on two of his own. The first in Brazil in 2013, a second in Costa Rica in 2024, have drawn skepticism from Catholics.

Born in London to wealthy insurance and publishing moguls, controversy has risen into his parent’s financial contributions to the Catholic Church ahead of their son’s canonization. Specifically, covering costs associated with his rapid canonization process; funding scholarships for children to attend Catholic schools; establishing the Carlo Acutis Foundation which operated orphanages in Tanzania and elsewhere; and donating lavishly to the church. Andrea Acutis and Antonia Salzano recall attending church only infrequently before their wedding day.

Despite young Carlo saving his allowance money to buy sleeping bags and meals for the homeless in Milan, media scrutiny persists over the influence of wealth along the path to sainthood. The Vatican Postulator — a sort of saint investigator — Fr. Nicola Gori confirms of the timeline, “money did not influence the cause. If there hadn't been a fame of sanctity, it would have come to a stop.”

However, fame and sanctity are contrasting concepts. Fame is a persistent, broad public recognition by the mass media, while sanctification is to be set apart for a special use of purpose. The two can coincide, particularly within religious contexts, but seldom coexist elsewhere in society. St. Acutis put it this way. ”All are born with their own originality, but too many die as photocopies.”

Young Matheus Vianna, who suffered from a rare disease called annular pancreas, was completely cured after touching a Carlo Acutis relic in a church in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil.

During a First Communion celebration, Vianna’s family learnt about Carlo Acutis; began a novena of prayer; and placed a piece of Acutis's clothing, a relic, on their son Mattheus. The next day, Mattheus’s symptoms disappeared, he began to eat and enjoy his favorite foods, soon grew to his normal size and weight, and went on to live a normal and happy life. The Vatican attributes the miracle to Carlo Acutis's intercession which led to his beatification in 2020.

In July 2022, Valeria Valverde, 21, was in a bicycle accident in Florence and sustained a severe head injury. Doctors deemed her situation critical and rendered her near death. Her mother, Liliana Valverde, made a pilgrimage to the tomb of Blessed Carlo Acutis in Assisi to pray for her daughter's healing, and on the same day her mother prayed at the tomb, Valeria began to breathe spontaneously. Subsequent medical tests, including a CT scan, revealed that the hemorrhagic contusion in her brain had completely disappeared. Valeria experienced a rapid recovery requiring only a short period of physical therapy before resuming a normal life.

Traditionalists see Acutis as a contemporary example of genuine, deep faith rooted in practices like Eucharistic Adoration. They view him as a symbol and resurgence of traditional Catholic devotion, and speaking to a younger generation through fame and sanctity.

However, some Progressive Catholics and media critics view Acutis's role as a computer prodigy as relatively ordinary, and see eucharistic miracles as a primitive or distorted fixation. The Economist’s “The Secret Life of the First Millennial Saint” explores how a computer whiz used his coding skills to create a website documenting Eucharistic miracles. Though a novel approach to evangelization through digital technology, they implicate the Acutis family's wealth in the canonization process, and reject medieval doctrines like transubstantiation which they say neither align nor serve ordinary people. A polarized political philosophy, both Progressives and Conservatives tend to advance legislative reforms through social movements.

The 33-hour manhunt that followed the killing of Charlie Kirk on Wednesday ended when Tyler Robinson, 22, turned himself in at a sheriff’s office 250 miles away from the shooting site in Washington, Utah. Officials said a family friend alerted the police that he was likely the shooter, and that relatives helped him “come to a positive resolution and surrender.”

People who knew Robinson in his youth said he was a reserved, intelligent young man raised in a Republican, LDS family. But a relative told the police he had become radicalized in recent years and focused on Kirk’s views. Robinson had confided to family members shortly before the shooting that he believed Kirk was “full of hate and spreading hate.” Yet the inverse — inscriptions on three bullet casings found with his rifle — tell a different story. Robinson had engraved his bullet’s to read: “Notices bulges OwO What’s This?”; “Hey fascist! CATCH!;” and "If you read this you are GAY Lmao.”

Erika Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk, says her husband's college tour and radio show will continue. “Evildoers responsible for his death should all know this: If you thought my husband's mission was powerful before, you have no idea," she said on Fox News. "You have no idea what you just have unleashed across this entire country and this world.”

The American experiment appears to have reached a turning point. Utah’s Republican governor, Spencer Cox, urged the country to lower the political temperature. “We have to find an off-ramp, or it’s going to get much, much worse,” and therein lies the paradox of the saint and sinner.

A sinner tends to repeat, reemphasize, and repost humanity's fallen state to an isolated base. They're agitators who willfully run afoul of divine law. Conversely, the heroic virtue of the saints lies not in a single act or deed, but rather in the savvy way they countenance that law in a way the world can see.