Saints for the Internet Age

The Wall Street Journal, 11 September 2025

Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis can serve as inspirations to today’s young men.

Consider St. Agnes of Prague (1211-82), canonized more than 700 years after her death, at a ceremony scheduled long in advance, on Nov. 12, 1989, in the days between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. Only Providence could have arranged a new Eastern European saint precisely at that time. For good measure, Brother Albert of Kraków was canonized with her. Some 10,000 Czechs defied the tottering communists to attend the papal Mass in Rome. Soon there would be no regime to defy.

Something similar may be afoot with the canonization of Pier Giorgio Frassati (1901-25) and Carlo Acutis (1991-2006) last Sunday. They are saints well-suited to our time, especially to the challenges young men face.

Frassati was beatified 35 years ago, so his canonization hasn’t been particularly quick. Acutis was born the following year, lived, died and was made a saint in record time—canonized 19 years after his death. In recent centuries only Pope John Paul II and Mother Teresa were declared saints more quickly.

Unlike the vast majority of saints, St. Pier Giorgio—“a beacon of lay spirituality,” according to Pope Leo XIV—and St. Carlo led lives accessible to ordinary Catholics. They had ordinary friends—Pier Giorgio was the archetype of the most popular boy in school—and did the ordinary things young men and teenage boys do: mountain climbing and camping, organizing innocent pranks, learning about computers and playing videogames. Others were eager to join their company and encouraged to follow them in what wasn’t typical: daily Mass, Eucharistic adoration, fervent prayer and direct assistance to the poor.

St. Carlo is often called “God’s influencer” because of his skill in developing devotional Catholic websites. He died before the iPhone was introduced, when podcasts and “influencers” barely existed. Yet he had a PlayStation and precociously realized, in his early teens, that digital addiction was bad for many of his friends. With preternatural discipline, he thus limited his videogaming to one hour a week.

Saints are by definition extraordinary, otherwise they wouldn’t attract the attention of the exacting canonization process, much less be approved by it. Reading of their heroic penances, mystical experiences, onerous missionary voyages or cruel martyrdoms can inspire. We can invoke their intercession, but their holiness is generally inaccessible. They’re easy to admire, difficult to imitate.

Not so with these two. St. Pier Giorgio’s life can be imitated. He enjoyed a wholesome party, considering it compatible with ordinary piety; a college student who enjoys the former can invite his friends to go to church with him. It takes courage but not much. It’s even easier now to begin by talking about who Pier Giorgio was and what he did.

Virtuous restraint on the internet is universally called for, if not widely practiced. A good fruit of St. Carlo’s elevation would be what ought to be called “The Acutis Rule”: one hour of week of videogames, no more. Perhaps the same for social media. When teenage boys and 30-something adolescents protest, begin with a modified Acutis protocol: one hour a day, nothing on Sunday. It isn’t complicated—it’s accessible and would do immense good.

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