The Catholic Church has declared its first millennial saint, and the moment arrived with a local connection in Northwest Florida.
Carlo Acutis, an Italian teenager who died of leukemia in 2006 at age 15, was canonized last weekend in Rome by Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope. Acutis is known worldwide for creating the first digital archive of what Catholics call Eucharistic miracles: events the Church teaches reveal the real presence of Christ in the bread and wine consecrated during Mass.
At the Basilica of St. Michael the Archangel in downtown Pensacola, visitors marked the same day with the opening of a Vatican exhibit showcasing Acutis’s life’s work. Panels filled the hall, recounting numerous accounts of bread that appeared to transform into heart tissue, and blood of type AB preserved intact for centuries…