Carlo Acutis, who died in 2006 and built websites to spread Catholic message, to become first millennial saint

In a see-through safe carved into a wall behind the altar of a chapel in northern Rome lies a collection of relics of Carlo Acutis. These include a splinter from his wooden bed, a fragment of a jumper and a piece of the sheet used to cover him after his death. Locks of his hair are on display in other churches in the Italian capital and beyond.

Acutis, the London-born Italian who on Sunday will become the Catholic church’s first millennial saint, built websites to spread Catholic teaching, earning him the nickname “God’s Influencer” after his death, aged 15, from leukaemia.