The boy is wearing sneakers. Bright green, Italian-flagged sneakers—the kind I might expect to see at a skate park, not here, flanked by thick adobe walls and centuries of incense. He stands beneath vaulted beams, the same beams that once shaded Manso elders, Spanish friars, Mexican revolutionaries, and now me, a curious pilgrim from Missouri. His name is Carlo Acutis, and he is not yet a saint. But his presence in this 360-year-old mission church feels like prophecy.
The Misión de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de los Indios Mansos del Paso del Norte was founded in 1659—over a century before the United States declared independence. It was established by Franciscan missionaries to evangelize the native Manso people, and over the centuries it has stood through revolts, reformations, and revolutions. Its thick walls have seen candles lit for lost children, prayers whispered for husbands at war, and songs sung for a Christ who never quite stays buried.
And now, in one corner of this ancient space, stands a boy in blue jeans.
The statue of Blessed Carlo Acutis is unassuming at first glance—red t-shirt, backpack, the casual dress of a modern teenager. But over his heart blazes a golden Eucharist, and in his hand a rosary. At his feet, carved simply, his name: CARLO ACUTIS.
He was born in 1991, the same year the World Wide Web was launched to the public. He died in 2006 of leukemia. Just fifteen years old. And yet, in that brief life, he somehow managed to remind the Church what it means to believe.
“To always be close to Jesus, that’s my life plan,” he once said.
Carlo was a computer whiz—he taught himself to code, learned graphic design and video editing, and used these tools not for ego or fame, but to evangelize. By age eleven, he had begun working on what would become his greatest project: a website cataloging Eucharistic miracles from around the world. By twelve, he had visited many of the sites himself, convinced that “the more often we receive the Eucharist, the more we will become like Jesus.”
He saw the internet not as a distraction, but as a vehicle—what he called a “highway to heaven.” He spoke to his generation in the language of hyperlinks and servers, not incense and Latin—and in doing so, opened a door many thought closed.
It is not lost on me that Carlo died in Milan while wearing the same kind of sneakers I now see on his statue. His mother said that he offered his suffering for the Church and for the Pope. His tomb in Assisi has become a pilgrimage site for young Catholics across the world. And somehow, inexplicably, his relics now rest here, in Juárez—a city at the edge, a place that knows all too well what it means to live between worlds.
Juárez itself is a place shaped by borders—physical, cultural, spiritual. But Carlo Acutis crosses those boundaries effortlessly. His life is a bridge from the past to the present, and from the ordinary to the divine. In a church built to spread the Gospel to Indigenous peoples, Carlo is a new kind of missionary—one whose evangelization happens through servers, screens, and stories.
“The only thing we have to ask God for, in prayer, is the desire to be holy,” Carlo once said. “If we have that desire, everything else follows.”
In him, I see something the Church needs desperately: a new kind of saint. Not one locked in golden frames or distant centuries, but a boy who liked soccer and video games. Who struggled with the same temptations and distractions as the rest of us. Who believed holiness wasn’t an escape from the world, but a transformation of it.
“All people are born as originals, but many die as photocopies,” he warned.
That line echoes now in this old church. It’s the kind of phrase that sounds like it belongs in a TED Talk, not a hagiography. And yet, here it is—carved not in stone, but in memory. In a world that encourages imitation and distraction, Carlo’s life is a call to live with clarity and purpose. To be yourself—fully, fearlessly, and for God.
As I sat in the wooden pew beneath the beam-darkened ceiling, I couldn’t help but feel the strange and sacred tension that filled the air. This building was once used to erase Indigenous identities. Now, it houses the statue of a boy who understood that true holiness doesn’t erase—it illuminates. It sanctifies the self without erasing the soul.
Before I left, I returned once more to Carlo’s statue. His eyes gaze upward, away from us, toward something higher. I wonder what he sees. A world not yet born? A Church not yet renewed? Or perhaps just the quiet face of Christ in the Eucharist, the way he always said he did.