1
His Name is Carlo
In the early 90s, Carlo's parents, Andrea and Antonia Acutis, lived in London, where Andrea was in business. Antonia worked in publishing. Back in 1918, her father, Antonio Salzano, had founded his own publishing house, Vie et pensée, which played an important role in Italian culture.
Andrea and Antonia first met in the summer of 1986 in Forte dei Marmi. This charming seaside resort lies on the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea off northwestern Tuscany in the marvelous Versilia region, known for its elegant villas set against a backdrop of steep, green mountains. Its long beaches of fine golden sand are lined with bagni, those chic establishments prized by the Italian upper classes, celebrities, politicians, and industrialists from all over the world.
That same year, the young couple got engaged, and two months after that, Andrea left for Aosta to join the Alpine Corps, or Alpini, Italy's oldest mountain troop for combat in steep terrain. Here he distinguished himself by his seriousness and skill. He then joined the Carabinieri at the Cesare Battisti barracks in Rome, where Antonia lived. On completion of his service, Andrea went to London to work in an investment bank. Antonia joined him on the grounds of improving her English before entering college to study for a master's degree in economics and publishing management. She and a friend moved into a beautiful house in the upscale Knightsbridge district near Andrea.
The area was synonymous with luxury, and home to one of the world's most famous department stores, Harrods, which dominated the scene with its imposing red-brick façade and bright lights. With its high-end products, from fashion to watches and jewelry, and its famous gourmet foods, it attracted international clientele and London's high society. Surrounding it were tall Victorian buildings, opulent hotels, and numerous tempting window displays of overpriced clothes and accessories. Also nearby were Hyde Park and its green spaces, and Sloane Street, renowned for its designer boutiques.
Andrea and Antonia celebrated their wedding on January 27, 1990, in Rome's Basilica of Saint Apollinaire near the Piazza Navona (Navona Square), in the Rione Ponte, a district that Antonia had lived in for much of her childhood and loved dearly. Situated on the left bank of the Tiber near the Sant' Angelo bridge, it is known for its picturesque streets, animated squares and Renaissance buildings, its wealth of history and art, its ancient charm, and its immaculate churches, palaces, and artisan workshops. It's also a great place to enjoy gelati!
Only close friends and family attended the ceremony, which was followed by a simple lunch in a nearby restaurant. The next day, Andrea and Antonia returned to London and settled into a small but very pretty oval-shaped apartment, with a garden in the middle, filled with many varieties of plants blooming year-round. Large windows welcomed the light and overlooked their little corner of paradise.
From this union, by the grace of God was born one of the greatest saints of the new millennium.
Antonia's family had already produced several saints: Saint Caterina Volpicelli (1839-1894), canonized in 2009 by Pope Benedict XVI, founded, and was an ardent apostle of the Servants of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, as well as of Eucharistic adoration. She worked for the Christian education of young people and the support of the poor.
And there was Saint Giulia Salzano (1846-1929), an Italian nun and founder of the Congregation of the Catechist Sisters of the Sacred Heart, dedicated to teaching catechism and religious education to children, especially the poor. Canonized in 2010 by Pope Benedict XVI, she was recognized for her passion for transmitting the Christian faith.
Carlo's family also included a number of war heroes, such as his maternal grandmother's father Renato. He was not particularly religious, but had studied at the Nazarene College in Rome, where he received a Christian education. Forced to flee Italy during World War II for fighting and risking his life to save Jews from deportation, he sought refuge with friends in Venezuela. He was athletic, as Carlo would later be, an excellent skier, and unafraid of a challenge. He befriended a missionary, with whom he rented a small plane and flew over areas of the Amazon rainforest that had not yet received the Good News of salvation, dropping packets of food and useful items to the indigenous populations, as well as photos of themselves. This familiarized the local people with their faces, making it easier to make friends in spots where they were able to land. On one occasion, Renato even saved a child who was to be sacrificed in a rite honoring the Amazonian gods.
When Antonia discovered she was to become a mother, she spent long days enjoying her pregnancy and making friends with other young women in her London neighborhood. She prepared for the arrival of her firstborn by shopping for the baby, but as the birth approached, she realized she had bought far too many clothes-her baby would never be able to wear them all, and she ended up giving some away.
Among her purchases was a baby carriage from the early twentieth century, very expensive and so big that Carlo's first nanny, Patsy, a Scotswoman barely taller than it, could hardly maneuver it. Carlo would not go unnoticed in this old-fashioned baby buggy! Although London is one of the world's most decadent cities, where all taboos are lifted, where originality almost becomes dogma, where people usually feel at ease in any bizarre situation, Patsy and her buggy would attract a lot of smiles around the neighborhood.
It was spring by now, and Carlo's arrival was expected any day. On May 2, 1991, at around 5:00 p.m., Antonia and Andrea headed for the Portland Hospital. Their baby was about to be born! However, the birth took over eighteen hours, and Antonia suffered greatly. The doctor had to use forceps, but Carlo finally gave his first cry on May 3, 1991, at 11:45 a.m.
As was the clinic's custom, the news of his birth was announced in the Times. On that day, no one could have imagined that this famous, highly secular magazine would repeat, many times over, the news of this newborn child, on the occasion of his beatification years later.
Carlo measured twenty-two inches and weighed seven and a half pounds. They placed him in the nursery on another floor, but Antonia always recognized his voice when he cried from hunger. Two days later, they were discharged from the maternity ward. As is customary in England, a midwife came regularly to the home to give advice and check that all was well with mother and child. But Antonia's milk supply was low, so her baby was not gaining enough weight. She had to switch to formula, but the new milk made Carlo suffer with terrible colic. Every evening when his father got home, he would take his crying baby in his arms and walk up and down the living room, alternating songs and odd sounds like, "Banga, binga, bongo, bungu." Finally, Carlo would calm down and fall asleep around eleven o'clock.
A nanny gave Carlo his daily bath, but when she was away, Andrea took over, much to her son's delight.
One day, Antonia went to Harrods, just a few minutes' walk away, to look for Carlo's first toy. Although she loved zebras, giraffes, and dogs, she decided to buy, without being able to explain it to herself, a little white-haired lamb.
"A celestial image, a sign, a premonition," she would say later on, for a lamb would play a role no fewer than four times in Carlo's life. He became quite attached to his new stuffed animal.
For Carlo's soul to fully unfold, he had to be baptized. Antonia's family was Catholic by tradition, but they were not practicing Catholics. Andrea's parents were more involved in Catholicism, but Andrea was no more religious than his wife.
Antonia admits that "before Carlo was born, I had no faith; I learned a few prayers from the nuns, but nothing more." She explains it this way:
Before Carlo, I'd only been to Mass three times in my life: on the day of my baptism, my First Communion, and my wedding day. We were illiterate about God. And normally, in the families of saints, there's always the father or mother who are exemplary, like the parents of Saint Thérèse, for example. In Carlo's case, it was he who brought us to the faith!
"... before Carlo was born, I had no faith."
I was a prisoner of relativism, which is synonymous with limitation, closure, boundaries, servitude and slavery. I lived in total ignorance, like the slaves described by the philosopher Plato in his Allegory of the Cave. From childhood on, they lived chained inside a cave, unable to move, so they believed that the shadows of external objects reflected on the wall in front of them were the only reality. One day, one of the prisoners managed to free himself from his chains and discover the truth. In a way, that's what happened to me.
At the time, we had no idea what an upheaval the grace of baptism would produce in Carlo. But he would later write a beautiful meditation on this Sacrament,1 reminding us it is "a vehicle of grace, an instrument of salvation," and railing at the fact that it is sometimes delayed: "To be resurrected and forgiven, it is necessary to allow oneself to be immersed in water, as Jesus did in the Jordan."
So, Carlo was to be baptized,...
