The mother of ‘God’s influencer’ Carlo Acutis has claimed she fell pregnant with twins at the age of 44 when her son came to her in a dream and told her she would be a mum again.
The London-born computer prodigy is set to be made the Catholic Church’s first ever millennial saint by Pope Francis after being credited with a series of miracles after his death.
Carlo died in 2006 at the age of 15 from leukaemia with the church saluting his short life as one of holiness.
But according to his mother, Antonia Salzano, the birth of her twins following Carlo’s death was in itself a miracle.
She said: ‘Carlo was my only child. I thought it was too late for me to become a mother again.
‘Then four years after he died Carlo appeared to me in a dream. He said I would be a mother again. I was 44.
The mother of ‘God’s influencer’ Carlo Acutis has claimed she fell pregnant with twins at the age of 44 when her son came to her in a dream and told her she would be a mum again
Carlo died in 2006 at the age of 15 from leukaemia with the church saluting his short life as one of holiness
The church of St Aldhelm in Malmesbury has depicted him as a young teenage boy, wearing a modern watch on his wrist and a mobile phone attached to his rucksack
‘But then I became pregnant and I had twins, a boy and a girl.’
Carlo was born in London in 1991 to an Italian mother and a half-English, half-Italian father who was working in the UK as a merchant banker.
He grew up in Milan where he took care of his parish website and later that of a Vatican-based academy.
From the age of three Carlo would donate his pocket money to the poor and later at school supported victims of bullying and spent his evenings cooking and delivering meals to the homeless.
Now a Roman Catholic Church in Wiltshire has had a stained glass window installed of the soon-to-be millenial saint.
The church of St Aldhelm in Malmesbury has depicted him as a young teenage boy, wearing a modern watch on his wrist and a mobile phone attached to his rucksack.
The stained glass window was installed in 2022, two years after the Vatican declared that Carlo was ‘blessed’ – a key step towards becoming a saint in the Catholic Church.
Carlo’s devotion to his faith was unwavering, with his parents saying his final words were: ‘I die happy because I didn’t spend any minutes of my life in things God doesn’t love.’
Even after his death, the youngster, informally known as ‘God’s influencer’, was performing miracles, supposedly healing a critically ill child and a brain bleed victim in 2012 and 2022.
Ms Salzano now refers to her late son as her ‘savior’ as Carlo taught her more and more about his faith and credits him with her conversion into Christianity.
She said she wasn’t very religious until her father died when Carlo was five and in that way her son saved her by helping her find ‘the real presence of God’.
Carlo (pictured) was raised by first an Irish nanny then a Polish one. They claim he was inspired in part by St Francis of Assisi, who was born in the same town Carlo was laid to rest
Carlo Acutis pictured smiling at the camera while sporting an AC Milan home kit from the 1990s
Carlo also helped the homeless and stood up for bullied classmates at school. Pictured: Young Carlo with his dog at Christmas
Ms Salzano previously revealed to MailOnline that her son was also keen supporter of Italian football team AC Milan but he never had the opportunity to visit the stadium before his life was cut short by leukaemia in 2006 aged 15.
One picture shared by the now mother-of-two showed the youngster smiling at the camera while sporting an AC Milan home kit from the 1990s.
Ms Salzano told MailOnline: ‘He supported AC Milan but he never went to the stadium and he enjoyed going on hikes in the mountains. He liked nature and he liked animals, in a way he was very similar to St Francis of Assisi.
‘He played the saxophone and he would make videos of our pet cats and dog and add music from Star Wars to them.
‘Carlo had many friends and was a real joker but his main hobby was computing and helping others, he was always giving food to beggars and sleeping bags to homeless.’
Italy’s amateur league has already announced it is considering making Carlo ‘protector’ of its players and coaches.
After it was announced that Carlo would become a saint, a London priest told how Carlo’s mother held up to 700 churchgoers mesmerised with an ‘electric’ speech about her son’s message of love.
Father Dominic Robinson, the parish priest of Farm Street Church of the Immaculate Conception in Mayfair, central London, heard Carlo’s mother Antonia Salzano address his congregation last summer.
Carlo (pictured as a baby) was also an incredibly smart young boy, speaking his first word at three months, starting talking at five months, and writing at age four
Cardinal Agostino Vallini, center, in the St. Francis Basilica, in Assisi, Italy during Carlo’s beatification ceremony, one of the steps towards sainthood
Carlo (pictured) would be only the second Briton to become canonised in nearly 50 years, after Cardinal John Henry Newman was made a Saint last year
He said it was standing-room only as she told how he was an ordinary teenager who lived to spread kindness by helping others.
‘It was standing room only,’ he said. ‘There were a lot of a lot of young people in their 20s and younger.
‘The atmosphere was really electric. You really got a sense of people being brought to faith and spirituality, with a commitment to something really tangible through the life of this young man.’
It was the Millennial generation of committed Catholics, who also brought their friends because they were really inspired by the life of this young man from the millennial generation,’ Father Robinson said.
‘He stood for something which was completely against the culture and yet, was very much part of the culture.
‘As we heard during the evening from his mother, he was computer savvy, he spent a lot of time online.’
Ms Salzano said Carlo had a ‘special relationship’ with God from an early age, even though her family was not religious.
She told Shalom Tidings that she had only ever been to mass three times before Carlo began dragging her to church at the age of three and a half.
Around the same time he began asking questions about his faith and engaging in practices she had never heard of including honoring existing saints, leaving flowers at shrines, and spending hours in church.
She said: ‘Through Carlo I understood that the bread and wine become the real presence of God among us. This was a fantastic discovery for me. He showed us how not to waste time. Each second of his life was glorification of God.’
The youngster even limited himself to one hour of video games each day so that he could devote more time to his religion. ‘Every minute wasted is one less minute to glorify God,’ his mother said.
Ms Salzano recalled that at the age of seven, Carlo wrote: ‘My life plan is to be always close to Jesus.’ At the age of nine he also began teaching himself about computer programming.
Carlo later used his skills to set up a website named, ‘The Eucharistic Miracles of the World’ where he researched and documented miracles attributed with the Eucharist.
15-year-old Carlo Acutis, an Italian boy who died in 2006 of leukaemia, lies in state in Assisi
Carlo (pictured) died in 2006 and is set to be made into a saint after supposedly healing a critically ill child and a brain bleed victim in 2012 and 2022
An image of 15-year-old Carlo Acutis is seen during his beatification ceremony celebrated by Cardinal Agostino Vallini in the St Francis Basilica, in Assisi, Italy, in October 2020
Acutis, who was nicknamed the ‘Patron Saint of the Internet’, came to the attention of the Vatican aged 11 when he used his IT skills to make websites documenting Eucharistic miracles
The website says it ‘aimed at confirming faith in the real presence of the body and blood of the Lord in the Eucharist’.
Since his death, Carlo has garnered a global following, and his body was moved to the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, Assisi where it is currently on display.
In the UK, he has been remembered by the Archbishop of Birmingham, who in 2020 established the Parish of Blessed Carlo Acutis with churches in Wolverhampton and Wombourne.
In 2012, a Brazilian boy was cured from a rare pancreatic disease after prayers had been made to Carlo to intervene with God.
The Vatican accepted the incident as a miracle attributed to Carlo and announced in 2020 that the computer lover would be beatified.
Beatification gives the person the title ‘Blessed’. Other beatified people include Mother Theresa and Pope John Paul II.
Acutis was beatified in Assisi, the home of his idol Saint Francis, who dedicated his life to the care of the poor.
A second miracle, which if confirmed, allows a deceased person to become a saint, if approved by the Pope.
Acutis’ second miracle came in 2022, after a 21-year-old Costa Rican girl recovered from a severe brain injury after a bicycle accident in Florence.
The woman, Valeria Valverde, underwent an emergency craniomoty to reduce pressure on her brain.
Her family were told she was in a critical condition, and her mother went to Assisi to pray at Acutis’ tomb.
That same day, the church claimed, the woman managed to breathe without aide, and then managed to speak again and use her upper limbs.
Scans showed the contusion on her brain had disappeared, and she was discharged from intensive care ten days later.