British-born Carlo Acutis – aka God’s Influencer – died aged 15 in 2006 after a life of piety and online preaching… Now he is set to become the Patron Saint of the Internet

Carlo Acutis, whose body now rests in a glass-sided tomb in a corner of Santa Maria Maggiore, is set to become the Catholic Church’s first millennial saint.

The bare facts of his life go like this: he was born at the Portland Hospital in London on May 3, 1991, an only child to an Italian mother, Antonia, now 58, and a half-English, half-Italian father, Andrea, now 60, whose work as a merchant banker had brought them to the capital temporarily.

Carlo was baptised at the Church of Our Lady of Dolours in Chelsea, West London.

When he was three months old, his family returned to Milan, where over the years Carlo became a deeply religious child — despite neither of his parents being especially pious. He made his first Holy Communion aged seven (not unusual for Italian children) and tried to attend Mass every day (which is).

Despite a privileged background, Carlo preferred to live a simple life, donating pocket money to the poor and volunteering in a soup kitchen. He loved animals, owning two cats, four dogs and many goldfish.

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