Pope Leo declares Carlo Acutis the Millennium Saint
Pope Leo XIV oversaw the canonization of Carlo Acutis, an Italian teenager who became the first millenarian saint.
The recent canonization of Italian Bartolo Longo shows that sometimes, on the path to sainthood, the devil is in the details.
Longo, who was once a 19th-century Satanist and was among seven new saints canonized this month by Pope Leo XIV, was a lawyer whose foray into witchcraft allegedly led him to… He promised his soul To a demon.
But in a dramatic turnaround, he eventually returned to his Catholic faith and became an ardent supporter of Marian devotion, eventually becoming known as the “Advocate of Our Lady.”
Pope Leo canonized Longo along with six others in Mass of October 19 in St. Peter’s Square In Vatican City to celebrate the global mission on Sunday.
The Pope said: “Today before us are seven witnesses, the new saints, who, with the grace of God, keep the lamp of faith burning.” In his sermon. “In fact, they themselves became lamps capable of spreading the light of Christ.”
Born in 1841, Longo was raised by devout Catholic parents when the church faced pushback from Italian nationalists, he noted. Catholic News Agency.
Longo will continue to pursue a career in law at the University of Naples, according to Catholic News Service OSV News.
But his father’s death led him to search for answers in the occult Jerusalem Post. struggle with anxiety, Depression and suicidal thoughts, he eventually underwent a severe fast and, according to the story, negotiated with the devil over his soul.
The Vatican News said that in 1865, he convinced university professor Vincenzo Beppe Longo to abandon Satanism. Seven years later, Longo felt called to a new mission: to promote the Rosary.
In the city of Pompeii, which was still in disarray centuries after the volcanic destruction of Mount Vesuvius, Longo founded what would later become the city of Pompeii. Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosarylaying the foundations for what would become the rejuvenation of Pompeii as a thriving community.
“It was Longo’s efforts that made her rise from the ashes,” OSV News wrote.
More community efforts followed as Lungu and his wife went on to establish an orphanage for girls and institutes for children of prisoners in subsequent decades. Longo died in 1926.
“He loved the poor, cared for abandoned children, sons and daughters of prisoners, and orphans,” Pompeii Archbishop Tommaso Caputo told OSV News. “He spread the Holy Rosary, bore witness to faith, became an instrument of love, and sowed hope in the world.”
In addition to Longo, Pope Leo elevated six other men and women to sainthood, including… Armenian Archbishop Tortured and killed after refusing to renounce Catholicism, A Venezuelan doctor who dedicated his service to the poor and many nuns who spent decades helping the persecuted.
The seven join two others who were canonized by the Pope last month, including Carlo Acutis, the British-born Italian whose death in 2006 at the age of 15 made him the first Catholic saint of the millennial generation.
