by Sara Parvis

Last November, Pope Francis issued a letter on the feast of the Lateran Basilica, encouraging dioceses to use the feast in future years for celebrating their own saints, and those on the way to becoming saints. (1)

In urging Catholics to be more aware of their local ‘saints next door’, it is likely that he was thinking of the difficult and costly process of pursuing the causes of local saints to full canonisation, as well as the importance of the universal call to holiness offered by God to all of us. There are those who consider it a pity that so many of the Church’s lay saints are aristocratic, or at least rich, as were   Carlo Acutis and Pier Giorgio Frassati, proclaimed saints by Pope Leo on 7 September. But it is open to us all to propose for diocesan recognition as Servants of God those of our deceased Catholic friends who have shown heroic virtue.

Meanwhile, our new universal friends Pier Giorgio and Carlo are well worth getting to know in their own right.

Carlo Acutis

Carlo Acutis (1991-2006), despite his wealthy background, really does seem to be a ‘saint next door’. Generation Z is likely to cherish the open-hearted boy with lapsed Catholic parents who brought them back to the Church and made all those around him think again about the importance of God in their lives. His websites of Marian apparitions and Eucharistic miracles recognised by the Catholic Church will make perfect sense to anyone who has ever suffered the wilder reaches of internet discussion about these topics.

Dr Sara Parvis is a senior lecturer in Patristics at the University of Edinburgh.

Photo by Mary Borozdina on Unsplash.