Highway to heaven: Melbourne teens gather to venerate relics of ‘influencer’ saint

He’s at the centre of what organisers call a “highway to heaven” missionary visit to Australia, and posters of Carlo Acutis radiated the charisma of a pop star at a Melbourne school last Wednesday.

With his tousled hair, gentle smile and red polo shirt, Carlo had the casual look of a singer like Ed Sheeran.

But Carlo is not in a band. And he’s not alive, at least physically.

Carlo, who died of leukaemia in 2006, age 15, was canonised – declared a saint – by Pope Leo in 2025, and is known as the first Millennial saint and God’s influencer.

Relics, meaning tissue from St Carlo’s body, are travelling around Australia in a Catholic Church-approved move to inspire people, particularly the young, to follow Jesus, do good, and cut back on video gaming.

On Wednesday, about 500 students – most of them teens – attended mass in St Carlo’s honour at Antonine College, a Maronite Catholic school in Pascoe Vale South.

They viewed the relics, kept in two 30-centimetre high metal reliquaries, that were displayed in the school hall.

One contained pieces of the pericardium (the sac that encloses St Carlo’s heart), that were visible through glass. The other contained strands of his hair.

After mass, students lined up to be blessed by the priest, Father Eli Yammine, and a nun, Sister Veronique Karam, who held the reliquaries over each child’s head.

At tables, students wrote prayers to St Carlo which will be sent to the saint’s tomb in Assisi, Italy.

Carlo, an English-born Italian boy who attended mass daily, was known for using social media and websites to evangelise, promote volunteering and document more than 130 church-approved “Eucharistic miracles” – instances of bread and wine turning into flesh and blood.

He played video games only for one hour a week, so not to distract him from his faith or helping others. After his death, two miracles – people surviving near-death illness or accident – were attributed to his intercession.

Kate Hobbs, president of Friends of St Carlo Acutis Australia, a lay group taking the relics to 53 Australian cities in four months, said young people relate to St Carlo.

“He challenges them, but he also gives them a hope and a way to come to God,” Hobbs said. The way he lived could teach them there was room for spirituality in their lives, she said.

Last week, Hobbs took St Carlo’s relics to Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital, where she prayed with a seven-year-old heart surgery patient and her parents.

The girl’s mother, who wanted to use only the name Joanna for privacy reasons, said her daughter had a “deep devotion” to St Carlo, and that the visit was special to her daughter because the relic was a piece of the saint’s heart “and she’s recovering from heart surgery”.

“It’s been a hard road and we’ve been doing novenas – a series of prayers – to St Carlo connected to my daughter’s deep devotion to him. My daughter has been praying to him for her healing,” she said.

“To have that opportunity for the relics to visit her, with her unable to visit them herself, was very special.”

At the Antonine College mass on Wednesday, Larisa Kyriakous, 17, who with 14 classmates visited St Carlo’s tomb – which features a lifelike effigy – in Assisi last year, said the teenage saint inspired her.

“Growing up in a world that relies on technology, we get so distracted with what’s around us, I think we forget, as Christians, what’s really important,” Larisa said.

“His story reminds us that we, too, can be saints and that we’re all called to be saints.”

Jacob Diab, 18, said that instead of using social media negatively, St Carlo used it to spread God’s word and to talk about miracles.

Marvin Tabet, 16, said St Carlo was “a great guy”, whom he could relate to because he lived in recent times, was around his age and was into technology.

The final Melbourne events connected to St Carlo’s relics will be held this weekend at St Catherine of Siena Parish in Caroline Springs.

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