Carlos Acutis, a tech-savvy Italian teenager who died of leukemia at age 15 in 2006, is on the path to sainthood—and pilgrims are flocking to Assisi to pay their respects.
What the local bishop described as a “volcanic explosion of faith” was captured in compelling text, photos and video by AP’s team: Rome-based photographer Gregorio Borgia, freelance video journalist Chris Warde-Jones, and global religion reporter Giovanna Dell’Orto, who was in Italy on a temporary assignment covering the Vatican.
Borgia and Warde-Jones recorded striking visuals of pilgrims gathered beside Acutis’ see-through tomb. Dell’Orto, fluent in four languages, stopped pilgrims as they exited and interviewed them about their experiences.
The result was a moving, all-formats story that highlighted what this emerging saint means to a new generation of Catholics and demonstrated the team’s flexibility and storytelling strengths in covering faith in modern contexts.
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