Last Sunday, Pope Leo canonized two new saints, Saint Carlo Acutis and Saint Pier Giorgio Frassati. Carlo was a gifted coder and devout Catholic who used his skills to build a multilingual website cataloguing Eucharistic miracles which earned him the name “God’s influencer.”

Frassati embodied ordinary devotion – he gave what he had, often helping the marginalized and ministering to those in need. Pope Leo said in his homily that this was holiness found in relationships, community, and everyday acts.

Together these two new young saints – one from the digital frontier, the other from 20th-century activism – form a complementary portrait of modern holiness.

Carlo Acutis shows how technology, curiosity, and devotion can work together to evangelize and inspire. Pier Giorgio Frassati demonstrates that faith flourishes in community, service, and joyful commitment to the poor. On that day, Pope Leo XIV invited the faithful, especially youth, to follow in their footsteps, turning ordinary lives into masterpieces of faith.

Both saints beckon us to discern how ordinary moments – whether online or in community – can bear divine fruit. If you are reading this article, ask yourself in what simple, ordinary way can I offer my time, talents, or presence as a living testimony of faith?

Something to know:

Today’s Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross celebrates several events in the development of the early Christian movement, including Empress Helena’s discovery of Jesus’ cross in Jerusalem between the years 326 and 328 AD, and the dedication of churches built by her son Emperor Constantine on the sites of both Jesus’s crucifixion and burial. (I have been blessed to visit and pray at both these sites.)

While Good Friday focuses on the passion of Jesus, today’s feast challenges us to consider the cross itself, the instrument that can be the means to new life. The wood of the cross becomes the tree of Easter life. May we remember today that our crosses, when taken up in His spirit of humility and hope, can be the first light of Easter for us and others.

Have a blessed week ahead.

With you a Christian. For you a priest.

Father Carl Morello
Pastor
Ascension and St. Edmund Parish
St. Catherine of Siena-St. Lucy and St. Giles Parish