As the Register reports from Sunday’s canonization that made Blessed Carlo Acutis a saint, “confidence in God… was clearly in the air.”

Indeed it was, as an estimated 80,000 faithful packed St. Peter’s Square to observe as Pope Leo ushered the first of the millennial generation into the communion of saints. 

As Fr. Patrick Briscoe, newly appointed head of communications of the Dominican order, told OSV News: “To a world now marked by selfies and self-interest, Carlo Acutis proposes an alternative. ‘Not me, but God,’ Carlo often said. His witness and the testimony of these answered prayers point us beyond ourselves to a God who offers new horizons of joy.”

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While it is probably premature to predict “Not me, but God” becoming the slogan of the Gen Y cohort born between 1981 and 1996, there was an additional horizon of joy on the day St. Acutis became a reality. Secular media reported the quasi-miracle of a slow but steady return to the Faith in none other than Great Britain where, as far back as 1954, the poet laureate of the post-War generation, Philip Larkin, foresaw churches falling remorselessly into disuse.

As Larkin asked rhetorically in his poem “Church Going,” which captured the coming cynical expectation for the future of Christian faith: 

“When churches fall completely out of use
What…shall (we) turn them into… shall (we) keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?” 

In fact, as luck would have it writes Dan Hitchens for the Wall Street Journal, “Across Britain, a wealth of evidence tells of a modest but real Christian revival.” Hitchens points, with caveats, to a YouGov poll bearing hard numbers as part of that evidence. The study, he writes, showed “churchgoing surged from 3.7 million in 2018 to 5.8 million in 2024 — a 56-per-cent increase.”

The even better good news was that “the most marked change, according to the data, was among 18- to 24-year-olds, among whom churchgoing was said to have quadrupled.”

The numbers are open to dispute from other research. Nor is the renewal evenly spread across denominations. Pentecostalism, Eastern Orthodoxy, High Church Anglicanism and “the more traditional strands” of Catholicism are reviving. Forms of “inclusive” Protestantism and soft-soled Anglicanism are “in big trouble,” according to experts.

But anecdotal accounts mixed with other sociological work support the claim that Christianity is once again becoming vital in British life. 

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Hitchens writes that sociologist David Goodhew, who is also an Anglican vicar, is finally getting credit “for more than 15 years (of) research (that) challenged pessimistic predictions of universal decline” by noting, for example, that since 1979 the number of congregations in London has risen by 50 per cent.

Immigration is unquestionably a key driver. But not the only one. “A secular worldview,” Goodhew says, “is actually pretty depressing. People are seeking more.” 

His own church has seen its own quiet revival, with “quite a dramatic upswing” in baptisms since the pandemic. 

 “What brings a sense of purpose, what brings hope after death, what brings the possibility of forgiveness when you mess up?” he asks. “Those are the big three questions that humanism has very poor answers to.”

 “We’re seeing death and resurrection,” Hitchens quotes Goodhew. “It depends where you look.”

Which should turn all eyes, Catholic and otherwise, to the beauty of St. Carlo’s steadfast faith from childhood even during times in his family life when his own mother struggled with doubt and spiritual dryness.

Paulina Guzik, international editor for OSV News, writes quoting Fr. Briscoe from the canonization Mass: “It was Carlo who brought (his mother) Antonia back into the practice of her Catholic faith. ‘He saved me,’ Antonia has said on many occasions.”

So, can a sudden religio-pop-culture wave of Carlo adoration “save” the Christian Church as well? Can adulation of the fresh-faced newcomer to the communion of saints revitalize the faith by attracting to regular worship the fallen away and the infamous “nones” of religious demographics? 

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Probably not. But we shouldn’t seek it as the source of salvation even if it could be. Our salvation, after all, is in Christ, of whom the saints are an invitation to imitation.

That said, what more timely, indeed prophetic, model could there be for a yearning generation than St. Carlo, whose devotion from childhood reminds us at any age to keep confidence in God in the air?