The recent canonization of "millennial saint” Carlo Acutis, who died in 2006 at age 15, demonstrates that the desire to venerate holy people is undimmed in the contemporary Catholic Church, says Kate E. Bush, a visiting assistant professor of history at the College of the Holy Cross. Bush explores how saints have been made through the centuries, detailing how Catholicism moved from accepting saints by popular acclamation to papal canonization. Even today, though, the devotion of everyday people is the main ingredient needed to make a saint, she argues.

And just as the youthful, internet-savvy Acutis reflects Catholic preoccupations today, Bush says, the saints of each era are a window through which the Catholic Church’s power and concerns are visible. She also focuses on the role of relics, the remains or possessions of a saint.

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