On Sunday the Catholic Church will acquire its first millennial saint, when Pope Leo XIV canonises someone who, if he were alive today, would be young enough to be his son. 

Carlo Acutis, a ‘computer geek’ from a prosperous Italian family, died aged just 15 in 2006. In this episode of Holy Smoke, Damian Thompson talks to Mgr Anthony Figueiredo and the Italian-based journalist Nicholas Farrell about the extraordinary phenomenon of St Carlo, the miracles associated with him – and the scepticism they arouse – and a mean-spirited attack on him by one of the late Pope Francis’s closest advisers. 

Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

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