The Backpack

When Carlo Acutis was a teenager in Milan, he had a habit that caught a lot of attention: he always carried a backpack, even when he didn’t seem to need one.

Inside it, he kept two things he considered mission-critical:

• A small Rosary
• Notes and printouts about Eucharistic miracles

Carlo was gifted with computers and the internet, and he had been building what would become the world’s first major catalog of global Eucharistic miracles. He saw technology as a tool for evangelization, famously saying:

“The Eucharist is my highway to heaven.”

But for Carlo, the backpack was more than storage — it was part of his intentional design for his life. He wanted to be ready to pray, ready to help, and ready to talk about what mattered. Friends said that sometimes he would stop on the street, pull something out of that backpack, and explain the meaning of the Eucharist to someone who was curious.

People later remarked that his backpack was like a mobile mission kit — humble, practical, and aligned with who he was: a kid who loved Jesus, computers, coding, and helping others.

When Carlo died at only 15 from leukemia, the backpack became symbolic of his approach to faith: portable, lived, and shared, not kept inside a church building.

After his death, his backpack was displayed at the exhibition of his life — a reminder that sanctity doesn’t always look like monasteries and candles. Sometimes it looks like a kid in sneakers with a laptop and a backpack full of passion.

Today, Carlo Acutis is on track to become the first millennial saint, proof that holiness didn’t end with old centuries — it just changed hardware.