Hundreds of people are making a pilgrimage to a church in a large housing estate to honour an Italian teenager nicknamed “God’s influencer”, who will be canonised as the Catholic Church’s first millennial saint next year.
A relic of London-born web-producer Blessed Carlo Acutis , who died aged 15 in 2006, is being viewed at St Anthony’s Church, Wythenshawe, Manchester.
The relic of his heart, kept in an ornate container called a reliquary, is on view in the church.
Such was the demand to see it that church authorities asked people to use a major ticketing website to book timeslots to pray in the church.
The Rt Rev Mark Davies, the Bishop of Shrewsbury, said: “The days of prayer and celebration in Wythenshawe invite us to draw closer to Jesus Christ as this teenager did in the first years of our century, above all by knowing His real and loving presence in the Holy Eucharist.”
Blessed Carlo was born on 3 May 1991 and moved to Italy with his Italian parents when he was three months old.
The teenager recorded purported miracles online and helped run websites for Catholic organisations, while also helping poor people and the homeless.
He was beatified in Basilica of St Francis of Assis, Assisi, Italy in 2020 in a Mass attended by his parents and twin siblings.