The Sept. 7 canonizations of Blesseds Carlo Acutis and Pier Giorgio Frassati are a crucial step in a decades-long effort to attract people to the Catholic faith through young, holy patrons.

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“Their canonization confirms that holiness is not an abstract ideal but can manifest itself in contemporary ways, close to the sensibilities of young people, in the present and now … through friendship, study, family, the challenges of today, and even through illness faced with Christian hope,” said Leticia Arráez, a communications researcher at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome.

According to Arráez, the last 40 years have seen youth become “major protagonists” in shaping the Church’s identity and spearheading its evangelical mission throughout the world.

During the pontificate of Pope John Paul II, young people were given priority and a privileged place of recognition within the Church, especially after the pope publicly entrusted the Cross of the Jubilee Year of the Redemption to young people on Easter Sunday in 1984.

Before the close of the 1983-1984 jubilee, John Paul II expressed confidence in young people as credible leaders. During the gathering in Rome, he said they had a “right and duty” to respond to the challenges they see in the world.

“You have a sort of prophetic role: You can denounce today’s ills by speaking out, first and foremost, against that widespread ‘culture of death,’” John Paul told the gathering.

“​​It is up to you, with your innate sensitivity to the values ​​proclaimed by Christ, and your aversion to compromise, to work, together with your elders who have not resigned themselves to such compromises, to overcome persistent injustices and all their multifaceted manifestations, which, like the evils mentioned above, have their roots in the human heart,” he added.

Throughout the 1980s, youth issues gained international attention within the Church and across other international platforms. During the 1985 U.N. Year of Youth, Pope John Paul II addressed young people in Rome to mark the occasion and to announce the creation of World Youth Day (WYD).

According to Arráez, the pope’s decision to create an annual global gathering dedicated to youth changed the perception that young people are primarily “recipients” of the Catholic faith, emphasizing instead their role as “privileged interlocutors” capable of building up the universal Church.

Acutis and Frassati were selected as patrons of WYD and, through these annual gatherings, devotion to these two blesseds have spread far and wide, beyond Italy, to every continent among people inspired by their examples of holy living.

Devotion to Acutis, who died Oct. 12 on the feast day of Brazil’s patroness, Our Lady of Aparecida, reached international level during the 2013 WYD in Rio de Janeiro as young Catholics began to hear more about his story and the miraculous healing, attributed to his intercession, of a 4-year-old Brazilian boy, Matheus Vianna, who had a rare pancreatic condition.

Beatified in 1990 by Pope John Paul II, Frassati became known as the “Man of the Beatitudes” and was made an official WYD patron by the pope ahead of the 2002 WYD in Toronto. He has since remained a WYD patron and his remains have traveled twice outside of Italy for the 2008 WYD in Sydney and the 2016 WYD in Krakow, Poland.

During a time when religious belief and practice have been under pressure from rapid secularization as well as scandals of abuse and corruption in the Church, the Church has chosen two young holy patrons who, through their lives, have shown the attractiveness of being real and authentic in their love of God and other people.

“The Church intends to propose accessible and credible models of Christian life for our time,” Arráez said. “Frassati with his social commitment, his charity toward others, and his joyful spirituality lived in the world, [as did] Acutis with his innovative use of technology as a means of evangelization.” 

Arráez said the recent focus on young ordinary saints, who were neither martyrs nor mystics, is in keeping with Vatican II’s message on the “universal call to holiness” promulgated in Pope Paul VI’s Lumen Gentium, which teaches that “all the faithful, whatever their condition or state, are called by the Lord, each in his own way, to that perfect holiness.”

“Through [Acutis and Frassati] the Church demonstrates that holiness, living the meaning of life in the present, is possible at a young age and does not require extraordinary conditions or waiting to grow up or for ideal circumstances … but rather an authentic lifestyle, rooted in faith and in the message of Christ that the Gospel teaches us, lived today, in 2025,” Arráez said.

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This article was originally published on Catholic News Agency.