When you think of saints, you may think of painted images of mythic people. You may think of fairy tales. You also may think of a football team, but the reality of Catholic saints becomes shatteringly tangible in writer/director/producer Tim Moriarty’s Carlo Acutis: Roadmap To Reality. The documentary focuses on the powerful life of the first millennial saint, Carlo Acutis. He was scheduled to be canonized on April 27th, 2025, but the ceremony was recently postponed due to Pope Francis’s death.
Acutis died of leukemia in 2006 when he was only 15 years old, yet his impact on those around him and the world has led him to sainthood. The film interviews Actuis’s family, friends, and top Catholic thinkers as they reveal his contagious love of Christ and the Eucharist. His devotion to the Eucharist led him to create a website dedicated to Eucharistic miracles, highlighting scientifically studied cases where the hosts have bled inexplicably.
Carlo Acutis: Roadmap To Reality juxtaposes the story of Acutis’ life with following a class from the University of Mary in North Dakota, as they go on a cell-phone free pilgrimage to Rome. The students learn to deal with not having a connection to social media and express their struggles in their faith journeys, which honestly depicts the struggle that we all face in our modern age of materialism. This is where the film’s heart lies. Some of the students are on fire in their faith and others are simply “Catholic” because their parents are, which creates a relatability in the film for anyone who has stepped away from their faith or is simply going through the motions.
“…the powerful life of the first millennial saint, Carlo Acutis.”
Carlo Acutis: Roadmap To Reality then explores the two miracles attributed to Acutis, which involved the inexplicable healing of 2 people who had prayed to Carlo Acutis after his death. In 2013, a boy in Brazil who was born with a malformed pancreas and wasn’t expected to live past 5 years old was miraculously healed after his mother prayed to Acutis.
The second case was in 2022 in Florence, Italy, where a 21-year-old woman suffered a head injury in a bicycle accident. With a slim chance of survival, her mother prayed at Acutis’ tomb in Assisi. That same day, her daughter’s condition improved, and she eventually fully recovered. The narrative powerfully shows in real time how these students are affected by the holiness of someone who used the internet and was of their time. Acutis’ life is a roadmap to sainthood. It isn’t something that is reserved for “special” people, but is achievable and intended for every person.
Carlo Acutis recognized the power of the internet as an important tool in evangelization. His website was intended to peak people’s interest and get them to leave the internet and return to life and ultimately Christ. His goal was to plant seeds of curiosity. In the same way, Carlo Acutis: Roadmap To Reality succeeds in giving viewers a worthwhile primer for further investigation.
"…succeeds in giving viewers a worthwhile primer for further investigation."
