The stained-glass artist Michael Vincent is returning to St Aldhem's Roman Catholic Church in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, to carry out one of the most unusual tasks of his career.
He is taking down the glass pane with the word "Blessed" beneath his depiction of the London-born teenager Carlo Acutis, who died of leukaemia at the age of 15 in 2006, and replacing it with a new pane saying "Saint". For today, Carlo, sometimes known as "God's influencer" because of his love of games and designing websites, is being canonised by Pope Leo XIV. It will be Leo's first saint-making since he was elected.
Well before the canonisation and even before he was beatified and called Blessed in 2020 - the penultimate stage before canonisation - Carlo had already become something of a cult figure in the Catholic Church. There are parishes in Wolverhampton and Chicago named after him. Biographies and spiritual guides have been written about him. A shrine has been set up in the Catholic Church of Our Lady of Dolours in Chelsea, where he was baptised before his wealthy Italian parents moved back to Milan. Pilgrims visit Carlo, lying in a glass-fronted tomb in a church in Assisi, wearing jeans and trainers, while the scene is permanently live-streamed via YouTube.
Part of the reason for Carlo's popularity is undoubtedly the narrative about his generosity, his kind-heartedness, his love of his faith - in effect, his holiness - and his early tragic death. Another is his modernity; he was a computer whizzkid who used his skills to design websites for the Church. The clergy have promoted him through public meetings, believing he has a particular appeal to young people, who have turned up in their hundreds to hear about him.
And of course, there is his novelty, which is not just about his age. While some ordinary people have become saints in recent times, the vast majority canonised have always been popes, bishops, priests, monks and nuns. Founders of religious orders particularly dominate the list of saints. Indeed, two women from Carlo's maternal line, Giulia Salzano and Caterina Volpicelli, who had each founded an order of nuns, were canonised earlier this century by Pope Benedict XVI.
One reason why popes, priests and founders of orders are canonised is that people linked to them have the knowledge and the financial wherewithal to get a canonisation campaign going. Being declared a saint requires investigations into a person's life and writings; it needs doctors to investigate claims of miracles, for two inexplicable cures of illness have to be linked to the would-be saint before their canonisation takes place. Two such cures have been attributed to Carlo after people prayed that he would intercede on the sick's behalf. And a postulator - the person who pulls together all this information and presents the case to the Vatican's office for the cause of saints - has to be hired.
All these investigations cost a lot of money, which religious orders may well have, but individuals usually don't. Carlo's grief-stricken mother did, so she invested in his cause. Today, when her boy becomes Saint Carlo, she will no doubt feel that confirmation by the Pope that her son is a saint - in effect saying that the Church believes Carlo is undoubtedly in heaven - has made all her efforts worthwhile.
Meanwhile, as George Eliot put it in Middlemarch, the good of the world is down to so many who have lived "a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs". Would that the Church might find some other way to honour people without a financial machine behind their cause. Votes, maybe? Or bring back an old method of saint-making, public acclamation for saints recognised in a particular locality. After all, amid all the hate and despair of current times, we need to honour the kind, the generous-hearted and the selfless. There must surely be other Carlos out there.