Papa Leo XIV: Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis invite young people not to waste their lives

Pope Leo XIV affirmed that the new saints Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis are an invitation for young people “not to waste life, but to guide her high and make her a masterpiece.”

Tens of thousands of faithful formed long lines around the Vatican hours before the start of the historical canonization mass of the young Italian Felsati and Acutis, the two saints who inspire and illuminate the new generations of young people.

Before the start of the canonization rite, the Holy Father greeted by surprise to the faithful gathered in the crowded Plaza de San Pedro. With a firm and appreciable joy, the Pontiff invited them to “prepare us with an open heart to receive this grace of the Lord and feel in the heart” the same as future saints have lived: love for Jesus Christ, in the Eucharist and in the poor. “We are all called to be saints,” he said.

He also thanked the presence of more than two thousand priests who have traveled to Rome from different corners of the world to participate in the ceremony.

Party in the sky! Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis are already saints

At 10:00 (local time), the canonization rite began. The prefect of Dicastery for the causes of the saints, Cardenal Marcello Semeraro, asked Pope Leo Xiv to canonize the blessed with a Latin formula. Subsequently, he read the biography of both.

At the end, the Holy Father invited everyone to pray and the choir sang the litanies of the saints. Subsequently, Pope Leo XIV pronounced the Latinization formula in Latin.

After being declared Santos, among the first rows the emotion of the mother of San Carlo Acutis, Antonia Salzano, who could not contain tears by witnessing that her son is already on the altars could be appreciated.

At the beginning of his homily, Pope Leo XIV cited the first reading, read in English by Michele Acutis, brother of the new saint. It is the first time that he was seen in public since the beatification of his brother. He was born along with his twin sister, Francesca, four years after Carlo’s death.

“The greatest risk of life is to miss God’s project”

The Holy Father stressed that Solomon, after the death of his father David, thanks the Lord for the wisdom that has sent him. In this context, the Pontiff remarked the value of wisdom to be able to know God’s projects and adhere faithfully to them: “The greatest risk of life is to miss it outside the project of God,” he warned.

He also stressed that Jesus invites us to load with our own cross and “calls us to launch ourselves without hesitation of the adventure he proposes, with the intelligence and strength that come from his spirit and that we can welcome to the extent that we strip ourselves of ourselves, of things and the ideas to which we are attached, to put ourselves to listen to his word.”

He recalled that many saints had to face this decisive moment of life when they were young, as is the case of San Francisco de Asís. “Sometimes we represent them as great characters, forgetting that for them it all started when, still young, they replied ‘yes’ to God and they gave themselves fully, without keeping anything for themselves,” he said.

A light for lay spirituality

He then cited the newly proclaimed Santos, San Pier Giorgio Frassati San Carlo Acutis, “a young man of the early twentieth century and a teenager of our day, both in love with Jesus and willing to give everything for him.”

He stressed that Pier Giorgio found the Lord through school and some ecclesial groups, such as Catholic Action or the conferences of San Vicente de Paul, “and gave testimony of it through his joy of living and being a Christian in prayer, in friendship and charity.”

He recalled that the young man, by seeing him traveling the streets of Turin with carts full of help for the poor, his friends called him “Transporta Felsati.”

For the Holy Father, the life of Pier Giorgio also represents a “light for lay spirituality.” For him, the Pontiff added, “faith was not a private devotion; driven by the force of the Gospel and belonging to ecclesial associations, he generously committed himself in society, gave his contribution in political life, he worn with ardor at the service of the poor.”

For his part, he indicated that San Carlo Acutis found Jesus in his family, thanks to his parents, Andrés and Antonia and then at school. But especially in the sacraments, held in the parish community.

Pope Leo XIV stressed that both “cultivated the love of God and the brothers through simple means, available to everyone: the Holy Daily Mass, prayer, and especially Eucharistic Adoration.”

Then, he cited some phrases from San Carlos Acutis: “When we get in front of the sun, we tan. When we get before Jesus in the Eucharist, we become saints.”

And also: “Sadness is to look at oneself, happiness is to look at God. Conversion is nothing other than diverting the look from below to the top. A simple eye movement is enough.”

Frequent confession, devotion to saints and charity

The Holy Father also highlighted some virtues that the two saints shared, such as frequent confession, essential for both, as well as their great devotion to the saints, the Virgin Mary and charity.

“Pier Giorgio said: ‘Around the poor and the sick I see a light that we do not have.’ He called the charity ‘the foundation of our religion’ and, as Carlo, he exercised it mainly through small concrete gestures, often hidden, living what Pope Francis has called ‘the holiness’ of the door to the side, ” he said.

Pope Leo XIV remarked that, even when the disease deteriorated their young lives, “not even that stopped them or prevented them from loving themselves to God, blessing it and asking for them and for all.”

In fact, he recalled that Pier Giorgio said: “The day of my death will be the most beautiful day of my life”, while Acutis liked to say that “heaven awaits us always, and that loving tomorrow is to give our best fruit today.”

An invitation not to waste life

“The saints Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis are an invitation for all of us, especially for young people, not to waste life, but to guide it high and make it a masterpiece,” he said below.

The Holy Father proposed to the new saints as a model for young people, who “encourage us with their words: ‘No 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 formula, simple but safe, of its holiness. And it is also the testimony that we are called to imitate to enjoy life to the fullest and go to meet the Lord at the feast of heaven,” he concluded.