thumbnail

My name is Gabriel Ferretti.

I’m 68 years old and for 15 years I was Carlo Akudis’ neighbor in Milan, Italy.

Today I need to share something that has haunted me since October 2006.

A conversation I had with Carlo when he was only 6 years old.

A conversation in which he predicted exactly how and when he was going to die and how after his death, the entire world would know his name.

It was March 1997.

I was watering my plants on the balcony when Carlo came out to his.

He was a beautiful child with deep eyes and a shy smile.

But there was something in his gaze that always unsettled me, a wisdom that didn’t match his age.

“Mr.Gabriel,” he called me with that high-pitched little voice.

“Do you believe children can be saints?” I answered, “Yes, of course.

Many saints had died young.

What he said next froze my blood.

“I’m going to be a saint, you know,” he said naturally.

“But first, I’m going to die when I’m 15 years old.

It’s going to be in October, and it’s going to be from a blood disease.

It’s going to hurt a lot, but I’m going to be happy because I’m going to be with Jesus.

” I laughed nervously, thinking it was childish imagination.

Carlo, don’t say those things.

You’re going to live many years, I responded.

He shook his head slowly.

No, sir.

God already showed me.

But don’t be sad.

After I die, I’m going to help many people from heaven.

They’re going to put my photo in churches all over the world, and you’re going to tell this story when I’m no longer here.

9 years later, in October 2006, Carlo Akudis died exactly as he had predicted.

leukemia fulminate.

He was 15 years old.

He died on October 12th.

Today, as the world prepares for his canonization in 2025, I fulfilled the promise I made to him to tell his story from the beginning.

From the day I met this extraordinary child in May 1994, I was 37 years old when I moved to the building on Via Alisandro Volta number 28 in the heart of Milan.

I had lived my entire life in Naples working as an elementary school teacher.

But I decided to move north to be close to my daughter who was studying at the University of Milan.

The apartment I bought was on the third floor, right below the Acutis family’s apartment on the fourth floor.

It was an elegant building in a quiet neighborhood, perfect to start this new stage of my life.

The first time I saw Carlo was on a sunny afternoon in late May.

I was organizing my plants on the balcony when I heard a little voice above.

Mommy, look.

We have a new neighbor.

I looked up and saw a small child, barely 3 years old, peeking out from the upper balcony.

His huge, dark eyes looked at me with surprising intensity.

It wasn’t normal childish curiosity I’d seen in thousands of children during my teaching years.

It was something deeper, more penetrating.

“Good morning,” I greeted him with a kind smile.

He returned the smile and said with perfect clarity, articulating each word like a much older child.

“Good morning, sir.

I’m Carlo.

Do you love Jesus?” I was completely astonished.

In all my years working with small children, I’d never heard a three-year-old ask such a question as a first question to a stranger.

Before I could answer, his mother appeared.

Antonia Salzano, an elegant woman about my age, with a slightly embarrassed expression.

“I’m sorry, sir.

My son Carlo has particular obsessions with religious topics,” she said timidly while gently holding Carlo.

Don’t worry at all, I responded, smiling.

He’s absolutely charming.

I’m Gabriel Ferretti.

I just moved here.

That’s how a friendship began that would change my life forever.

In the following weeks, I established a close relationship with Antonia and little Carlo.

I discovered the Acudis family was well off.

Andrea Audis worked in the insurance sector and Antonia had studied editing.

But what caught my attention most even from those early days was Carlo’s extraordinary religious devotion.

It wasn’t just that he liked going to church.

It was a passion that consumed his thoughts and conversations constantly.

One June afternoon, while Antonia and I were having coffee in my kitchen, she confessed something that clearly worried her.

Gabriel, neither Andrea nor I are particularly religious.

I was baptized and confirmed like most Italians.

But before Carlo was born, I’d gone to mass maybe three times in my adult life.

My first communion as a child, my confirmation as a teenager, and my wedding.

I’m not atheist, but I’m not practicing either.

Andrea is the same, so I don’t understand where Carlo got this intense passion for faith.

I explained that in all my years working with children, I’d seen some cases of naturally religious children.

But I admitted I’d never seen something so marked in one so small.

Carlo didn’t just ask to go to mass constantly.

He asked profound theological questions that Antonia didn’t know how to answer.

It was then that truly inexplicable things began to happen.

The first occurred in June 1995 when Carlo was exactly 4 years and 1 month old.

I was on my balcony that afternoon enjoying the warm Milan sun when I heard Carlo calling me from the upper balcony.

Mr. Gabriel, do you know St.

Francis of Aisi? I answered, “Yes, of course.

All Italians knew St.

Francis, the saint of Aisi.

” What he said next left me completely frozen.

He spoke to me last night while I was sleeping.

He said with absolute naturalenness, the way a child would talk about an ordinary dream.

He told me I’m also going to love the poor a lot like he did and that I’m going to go to heaven when I’m still young, like St.

Tarsus.

I felt a chill run down my spine.

I asked him who St.

Tarsus was because honestly, I didn’t know.

He was a child martyr who died defending the Eucharist when he was about 12 years old.

Carlo explained with a seriousness completely inappropriate for his age.

The Romans stoned him to death because he wouldn’t give them Christ’s body.

I immediately went down to Antonia’s apartment and told her word for word what Carlo had said.

I saw her face turn completely pale.

Gabriel,” she whispered quickly, taking me to her kitchen so Carlo wouldn’t hear us from his room.

“Never, and I mean never, have we spoken to him about St.

Tarsissius.

I didn’t even know who he was until Carlo started mentioning him about 2 weeks ago.

” We both sat in silence for several minutes, processing the complete impossibility of the situation.

How could a 4-year-old child know precise historical details about obscure saints that absolutely nobody had taught him? That afternoon, we searched together in the Catholic Encyclopedia that Antonia had bought after Carlo started with these things.

Everything Carlo had said was exactly correct.

St. Tarsizius died young, approximately at 12 years old.

He was martyed while protecting the sacred Eucharist from profanation.

“There’s something about my son I can’t explain,” Antonia told me with tears rolling down her cheeks.

“Sometimes he scares me a little, Gabriel.

” The following months brought more and more completely inexplicable events.

Carlo talked constantly about saints nobody had ever mentioned to him.

St.Dominic Savio, St.

Aloyius Gonzaga, St.

Chasinta MTO of Fatima.

He described specific details of their lives, their virtues, their sacrifices with precision that was absolutely astonishing for his age.

But the most disturbing of all was that Carlos seemed to have some kind of prophetic knowledge of things.

There was no human way he could know.

In September 1995, a few days before his first year of elementary school began, Carlo told me something that froze my blood to the bone.

I was on my balcony when he came out to his with his new shiny backpack.

“Mr. Gabriel,” he called me with that high voice, but surprisingly clear.

“My new teacher is going to be called Mrs.

Benardetta.

She’s very sad in her heart because her husband is very sick with cancer, but he’s going to get better if she starts praying the rosary every day.

“My guardian angel told me last night,” I asked, trying to keep my voice calm.

How he knew his teacher’s name if he hadn’t started classes yet.

“My guardian angel told me last night while I slept,” he responded with total naturalenness, as if talking to angels was the most normal thing in the world.

The next day when Carlo returned from his first day of school, he confirmed that indeed his teacher was called Benadeta.

Two weeks later, Antonia told me something even more disturbing and surprising.

Teacher Benadeta had approached her after class, visibly emotional and very confused.

Mrs. Audis, your son Carlo, did something very strange today during recess.

He approached me, took my hand, looked me in the eyes, and said, “Teacher, don’t be sad about your sick husband.

If you pray the rosary every day with faith, he’s going to get much better.

God promised me.

” Mrs. Audis, absolutely nobody at this school knows my husband has advanced stage pancreatic cancer.

Nobody.

I haven’t even told the principal because I don’t want them to treat me differently.

How did your son know? Antonia didn’t know what to answer, how to rationally explain that her four-year-old son knew things he humanly couldn’t know.

Teacher Benardetta, who until that moment wasn’t particularly religious, according to what she told me later, began praying the rosary daily with renewed faith.

Three months later, in December 1995, doctors at San Raphael Hospital confirmed something medically inexplicable.

Her husband’s cancer had entered complete remission with no clear scientific explanation.

That was only the first of many completely impossible coincidences that surrounded Carlo Audis’ life during the following years.

But nothing compared to what Carlo personally revealed to me in March 1997.

in that conversation I mentioned at the beginning of this testimony.

This conversation that changed my life forever.

It occurred on a quiet Saturday afternoon.

I was on my balcony watering my favorite geraniums when Carlo came out to his with an unusually serious and solemn expression for a child of barely 6 years old.

Mr.

Gabriel, he called me with a tone that immediately captured all my attention.

I need to tell you something very important, something you have to remember forever.

His tone was so grave and solemn that I immediately put down my watering can and gave him my complete attention.

“What is it, Carlo?” I asked, feeling a knot forming in my stomach.

He looked directly into my eyes with those deep, dark eyes that always intimidated me a little.

You asked me a few days ago if children can become saints.

He began with a clear voice.

Yes, I remember that conversation perfectly.

I responded.

I’m going to be a saint, he declared with total absolute conviction.

But it’s not going to be right now.

First, I have to do something very important that God has entrusted to me.

I have to tell everyone in the world about Jesus in the Eucharist.

I’m going to make a website on the computer about all the eucharistic miracles that have occurred in the world.

I was greatly surprised that a six-year-old child even knew what a website was.

We were in 1997 and personal computers were just beginning to become popular in Italian homes.

Very few children his age had any knowledge about the internet or programming.

After I finished that important work, Carlo continued without pause.

When I’m exactly 15 years old, I’m going to get very sick.

It’s going to be a blood disease called leukemia.

My heart literally stopped for a second.

Carlo, please, why do you say such terrible things? I asked with a trembling voice, feeling tears forming in my eyes.

Because God showed me clearly, sir.

He responded with absolute tranquility.

Last night, Jesus personally came to my room.

It wasn’t a normal dream, Mr.

Gabriel.

He was really here, physically present.

He touched my head with his hand and showed me visually my entire complete future from now until my death.

Tears began running freely down my cheeks as I listened to his impossible words.

I clearly saw I’m going to die in October 2006.

Carlo continued with that same supernatural calm.

I’m going to be exactly 15 years old.

I’m going to get very aggressive leukemia and I’m going to be sick only a very short time, like a week approximately.

It’s going to hurt a lot.

The pain is going to be terrible, but I’m going to offer absolutely all that suffering for the Holy Father, the Pope, and for the entire Universal Catholic Church.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

Carlo, my dear, you can’t know those things, I said, sobbing.

Absolutely nobody knows when they’re going to die.

Those are things only God knows.

He smiled at me with a wisdom that seemed like someone with 80 years of experience, not a child of barely 6 years.

But I do know, sir, because Jesus himself showed me.

And it’s perfectly fine that way.

Don’t have any fear for me.

I’m going to be happy when that moment arrives because finally I’m going to be with Jesus for all eternity.

He moved closer to his balcony railing and lowered his voice a bit as if sharing a secret after I die.

He continued with absolute certainty.

God is going to do many extraordinary miracles through my body and through my intercession from heaven.

My photograph is going to be hung in churches absolutely all over the world.

Pilgrim people are going to come from many different countries to pray and ask favors where my tomb is located.

He paused and looked at me intensely.

And the most important thing of all, Mr.

Gabriel, is that you specifically have the mission to tell this complete story.

When I’m no longer here physically on Earth, you’re going to be my principal witness that I already knew exactly what was going to happen.

That’s why I’m telling you absolutely all of this now in such detail so that when everything happens exactly as I’m predicting, you’ll know with total certainty it wasn’t any coincidence.

It was God’s perfect plan from all eternity.

I asked with a broken voice if his mother Antonia knew all this.

No, not yet, he responded, shaking his head.

Mom gets too sad and cries a lot when I talk about my future death.

But you’re very strong, Mr.

Gabriel.

You can keep this sacred secret until the right moment comes to reveal it.

The years passed inexurably.

Carlo grew and transformed into a thin but healthy teenager with intense, deep eyes, always with a laptop under his arm, always talking passionately about the Eucharist.

But I couldn’t stop thinking obsessively about his prediction from years before.

We were already in 2005.

According to what Carlo had told me with such certainty in March 1997, he only had approximately one more year of life left.

Every time I saw him climbing the building stairs with his heavy backpack, my heart compressed painfully, thinking maybe that would be his last year of life.

In March 2006, exactly nine complete years after our prophetic balcony conversation, Carlo came to visit me personally at my apartment.

It was a quiet Saturday afternoon, and he knocked on my door with an unusually serious expression.

“Mr.

Gabriel, can we talk a moment in private?” he asked with a solemn tone.

I sat with him in my small living room and served him fresh homemade lemonade.

Carlo looked directly at me with those deep eyes that now belong to an almost adult young man of 15 years.

But that maintained exactly the same spiritual intensity they had when he was a small child.

You remember perfectly our balcony conversation when I was exactly 6 years old.

He asked me directly without beating around the bush.

I felt my heart literally stop.

Yes, Carlo.

I remember vividly every word you told me that day.

I responded with a trembling voice.

I want you to know with absolute certainty that everything, absolutely everything I told you that day 9 years ago is still completely true, he said, looking at me intensely.

There’s very little time left now, sir.

This year, 2006, everything I told you so many years ago is going to happen.

Exactly.

Tears began running uncontrollably down my cheeks.

Carlo, please don’t talk like that.

You’re so young, so full of life.

You still have a whole beautiful life ahead.

He took my wrinkled hands with infinite tenderness.

That broke my heart.

Mr. Gabriel, please don’t be sad for me.

I’m genuinely happy and at peace.

I’ve successfully completed my main mission here on Earth.

The website about eukaristic miracles is completely finished and is already helping thousands of people around the world discover and understand the real presence of Jesus in the eukarist.

I’m completely ready and prepared for what’s coming very soon.

His peace was absolutely disconcerting, almost unnatural.

Here was a young man of barely 15