CHELSEA — Two young men from Italy to be canonized this year still prove that holiness is not just for saints, according to a panel discussion on Feb. 16 at the annual Catholic conference, the New York Encounter.

Pope Francis is scheduled to canonize teenage computer whiz Carlo Acutis (1991-2006) as the first millennial saint on April 27, and Pier Giorgio Frassati (1901-1925), an avid mountaineer and helper of the poor, will be canonized on Aug. 3 during the Jubilee of Young People in Rome. 

Joining the panel via video was Carlo Acutis’ mother, Antonia Salzano. 

She described being baptized a Catholic but living in a family that didn’t value the other sacraments or even the Mass. That changed when her own son, who was 5, had an apparition in a dream of his late grandfather — Antonia’s father — who asked for the boy’s prayers because he was in purgatory.

Salzaono said her son’s abilities frightened her at first. Trying to make sense of them, she sought a meeting with Father Ilio Carrai, a priest in Bologna, Italy, known as the “Padre Pio of Bologna” for his mysticism. Although he had yet to meet the mother, he knew about her son.

“I called him, and he received me straight away, and he started to tell me things about my son,” Salzano recalled. “He started to tell me that Carlo would be very famous for the Church and that he had a special mission.”

Salzano drew laughter from the panel and the audience when she said, “I was really astonished. I was thinking to myself, maybe he will become the pope or a bishop.”

“And since that moment, I really started to follow my son,” she said. “I say always that Carlo was my savior because, through Carlo, I understood the importance of the Eucharist. I understood that in the Blessed Sacrament, there is the Real Presence of God among us. And this was the discovery of my life.”

Although Acutis and Frassati lived 66 years apart, they have more in common than their homeland, according to panel moderator Amy Hickl, who was joined on the panel by Christine Wohar and Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the papal nuncio to the United States.

Their discussion, “A New Life,” took place at the Metropolitan Pavilion on 18th Street in Chelsea.

Hickl, the dean of faculty for Notre Dame Academy School in Los Angeles, said both men still inspire young people throughout the world for how they uncompromisingly loved Jesus and championed the Eucharist.

“Pier Georgio Frassati was a man of deep faith, contagious joy, and devotion to Christ,” Hickl said. “He shared his faith freely, inspiring friends to seek God in daily life.”

Similarly, Hickl added, Acutis “used his talent with computers to create a website cataloging Eucharistic miracles, believing that ‘The Eucharist is my Highway to Heaven.’ 

Wohar is the founder and president of FrassatiUSA, a Nashville-based non-profit organization formed to promote Frassati’s cause of canonization. She also authored the 2021 book “Finding Frassati: And Following His Path to Holiness.”

She said the similarities of the young men’s stories “are just striking” because both had deep spiritual lives despite non-practicing Catholic parents. Wohar commended how Salzano’s faith grew, but noted that didn’t happen in Frassati’s family.

“Pier Giorgio didn’t have the example of a family that prayed in the home together,” Wohar said. “And yet he, like I was hearing with Carlo, had some kind of inner charism of this grace — the action of the Holy Spirit.”

And, like Acutis, Frassati was quite young when his charism emerged.

“The stories are told of him,” Wohar said, “like even at 4 years old, opening the door and seeing a beggar woman with a child with no shoes or socks. He took off his own socks immediately and gave them to her.”

Frassati was 24 when he succumbed to a sudden bout with polio. The 100th anniversary of his death is commemorated with his canonization.

Leukemia claimed Acutis at age 15.

Cardinal Pierre commented on the timeliness of canonizing inspiring saints for modern young people.

“It’s a time of grace because the purpose of our life is holiness,” he said. “But we need to have models — the saints — in the life of the Church. They are offered to us as a gift from God so that we may have directions. We have here, today, two very good examples.”

The conference drew participants from throughout the U.S. — many of them youth and young adults. Included were two teens from St. Benedict Parish in Atchison, Kansas.

Joshua Gonzalez, 16, said he hopes to follow Frassati’s examples.

“It was interesting to hear stuff I hadn’t yet read about him, especially his leadership with the other people in his age group,” Gonzalez said. “I was struck by how he would reach out to the others and really make the faith very appealing.”

Francesco Zia, 14, said Acutis is going to be his confirmation saint.

“It was cool to see how he was so devoted at a young age,” Zia said. “It shows it’s possible for everybody to be holy.”

Also in the group was Edith Riches, 14, of Rochester, Kansas. She was inspired to hear from Acutis’ mother how she wasn’t a practicing Catholic, yet she trusted that “there was something there that was true.”

“These men were young, around our age, yet they lived such holy lives,” Riches said. “It just makes you want to live like that.”