Overview

• The pope pronounced the formal canonization during Mass in St. Peter’s Square, marking his first canonization since his 2025 election.
• Rome’s security operations center reported nearly 70,000 people in the square as national delegations joined President Sergio Mattarella, with 36 cardinals, 270 bishops and about 1,700 priests concelebrating.
• Acutis, widely presented as a patron of the Internet, was elevated on the basis of two Vatican-recognized healings: a Brazilian child in 2013 and Costa Rican student Valeria Valverde in 2022.
• Frassati, a Turin layman active in Azione Cattolica and service to the poor, died in 1925 of fulminant poliomyelitis and was beatified in 1990.
• Pilgrims queued in Assisi at Acutis’s shrine to follow the rite on screens as the Vatican highlighted the pair as accessible models of lay holiness for younger generations.