This is exactly what’s supposed to happen.

I did what Carlo told me to do in those last seconds.

I forgave the driver.

I offered my life for your conversion.

I told Jesus I was ready.

And it was beautiful.

Aleandro.

It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever experienced.

He died during surgery at 1:43 a.

m.

on October 19th, 2011, exactly as Carlo had prophesied, down to the date, if not the exact hour.

I sat in the hospital waiting room completely numb.

My mind unable to process the reality that my little brother was gone.

That the prophecy I had both feared and hoped wouldn’t come true had been fulfilled in every horrifying detail.

When I finally returned home the next day, I found the wooden box Carlo had given to Mateo 5 years earlier.

Inside along with the rosary and crucifix was the note Carlo had mentioned written in his characteristic neat handwriting.

It contained specific instructions for what Mateo should do in the final moments before the accident.

Dear Mateo, when you see the car coming toward you in those last seconds, don’t be afraid.

Instead, do these three things.

First, forgive the driver completely, knowing that he’s a broken person who needs God’s mercy, just like we all do.

Second, offer your death as a prayer for your brother Alessandro’s conversion, asking Jesus to use your sacrifice to break through his intellectual pride and bring him to authentic faith.

Third, tell Jesus you’re ready to come home and trust that he’ll be there to receive you with joy.

I’ll be there too, waiting for you.

And together, we’ll begin the real work of interceding for all the people we love.

I promise you won’t feel pain or fear, only peace and the beginning of joy that will never end, your friend in heaven, Carlo.

I read that note dozens of times over the following days, my mind reeling from the precision of Carlo’s prophecy.

He had known 5 years in advance not just that Mateo would die in a car accident, but the specific date, the approximate time, the name of the drunk driver, and even what Mateo should do in his final conscious moments.

This level of detail went beyond lucky guessing or vague predictions.

It was either genuine prophecy or an elaborate hoax, and I knew with certainty it wasn’t a hoax.

The funeral was held on October 22nd, another painful echo of Carlos’s funeral 5 years earlier.

But this time, I wasn’t just a skeptical observer.

I was the chief mourner, the brother who had to eulogize a 17-year-old who should have had decades of life ahead of him.

I stood at the pulpit and told the congregation about Carlos’s prophecy, about how Mateo had lived the last 5 years with knowledge of his coming death, about the note found in the wooden box with its specific instructions.

My brother died exactly as

Carlo Acudis predicted he would,” I said, my voice breaking with emotion.

“And I still don’t know what to do with that information.

I don’t know how to make sense of a god who would allow such a thing, who would give knowledge of a tragedy but not prevent it.

I’m angry.

I’m devastated.

And I’m lost in a way I’ve never been lost before.

Father Marco, the same priest who had celebrated Carlos funeral, approached me after the service.

“Aleandro, I know you’re in the darkest place right now,” he said gently.

But I want you to remember something.

Carlos’s prophecy didn’t end with Mateo’s death.

He also prophesied what would happen after.

Specifically, he prophesied your conversion and your calling to priesthood.

That prophecy is still in process.

And when it’s complete, you will understand why all of this had to happen.

I wanted to scream at him that I would never convert.

that if this was how God treated people who loved him, I wanted nothing to do with such a God.

Instead, I went home, got very drunk, and began the 2-year descent into darkness that Carlo had also prophesied with disturbing accuracy.

The two years following Matteo’s death were the darkest of my life.

A spiral into grief, alcoholism, and bitter anger toward God that cost me my job.

Most of my friendships and nearly my life on several occasions when drunk driving or suicidal ideiation brought me close to following my brother into death.

I rejected every attempt by my family, friends, or religious people to comfort me or draw me back toward hope.

I blamed God for Matteo’s death, blamed Carlo for telling me it would happen, blamed myself for not preventing it somehow despite knowing it was coming.

I avoided churches, avoided anything that reminded me of faith, and especially avoided opening the third letter that Carlo had left me.

The one he said was for when I was ready to fully surrender my life to God.

That letter remained sealed in my safe deposit box, a symbol of a prophecy I refused to allow to be fulfilled, evidence of a God whose plans I wanted no part of.

But on October 12th, 2013, exactly 7 years after Carlo’s death, and almost exactly 2 years after Matteo’s death, something happened that shattered my resistance and fulfilled the final part of Carlo’s prophecy in a way I never could have anticipated or engineered.

I was at my lowest point, drunk and contemplating suicide in my apartment when I heard a knock at my door at 3:00 in the morning.

When I opened it, there was no one there.

But on my doorstep was a package containing a laptop computer with a note attached.

Aleandro, this was Carlo’s personal laptop, the one he used to create his Eucharistic Miracles website.

We found something on it that we think you need to see.

Carlo’s parents.

Inside the package was also a flash drive with a video file dated October 11th, 2006, the day before Carlo died.

With trembling hands and a pounding heart, I opened the laptop and played the video.

Carlo appeared on screen, filmed in his hospital room the day before he died, looking weak but radiantly peaceful.

And he began to speak directly to the camera, directly to me with words that felt like they were reaching across seven years to pull me back from the abyss I was falling into.

“Hi, Aleandro,” the video began.

Carlo’s voice slightly distorted by his physical weakness, but still unmistakably him.

If you’re watching this, then it’s probably October 2013, and you’re probably at your absolute lowest point.

You’ve been drinking too much.

You’ve pushed everyone away.

You’ve been thinking about suicide.

And you’re convinced that God is either cruel or non-existent.

I know all this because he showed it to me and he asked me to record this message specifically for this moment when you need it most.

I need to tell you something that’s going to sound impossible, but I need you to really listen.

God loves you more than you can possibly imagine.

He loves you so much that he allowed me to die young, specifically so that my death and Mateo’s death could be the hammers that would break through your pride and bring you to the authentic encounter with Jesus that you desperately need.

That probably sounds terrible to you right now, and I understand why, but please keep listening.

In a few hours from when you’re watching this, probably around 4:00 a.

m.

, you’re going to hear another knock at your door.

When you answer at this time, there’s going to be someone there, someone who knew both me and Matteo, someone who has a message for you that’s going to change everything.

Don’t send this person away.

Don’t be rude or dismissive.

Invite them in.

Listen to what they have to say.

and be open to the possibility that God is reaching out to you through them.

This person is going to tell you something that only you and Mateo knew.

Something that will prove beyond any doubt that they’ve been in contact with Mateo since his death.

I can’t tell you what it is.

You need to hear it from them.

But when you hear it, you’ll know it’s real and it will be the beginning of your conversion.

After that conversation, I need you to open the third letter I left you, the one you’ve been avoiding for 2 years.

Read it completely.

Follow its instructions exactly.

And trust that what happens next is the beginning of your real life, the life you were always meant to live.

I know you can’t see it now, but you’re going to become one of the most effective priests in our dascese.

And you’re going to help hundreds of people who have lost faith find their way back to God because you’ll understand their doubts and their pain better than almost anyone.

I love you, Aleandro.

Mateo loves you.

And Jesus loves you most of all.

This isn’t the end of your story.

It’s just the difficult middle part that makes the ending more beautiful than it could have been without the struggle.

I’ll be praying for you from heaven every step of the way.

See you someday, my friend.

The video ended and I sat in stunned silence, tears streaming down my face, my mind reeling from hearing Carlo’s voice after 7 years of silence.

And exactly as he had prophesied at 4:07 a.

m.

there was another knock at my door.

This time when I opened it, there was someone there.

Sister Teresa Benadeti, an elderly nun who had known both Carlo and Mateo through her work at the youth center where I had first met Carlo 8 years earlier.

She looked at me with infinite compassion and said simply, “May I come in? I have a message from your brother.

” What sister Teresa told me over the next three hours would transform my life completely.

She described a dream she had experienced the previous night in which Mateo appeared to her with Carlo beside him, both radiant with joy, asking her to go to my apartment and deliver a specific message.

That message included details about a conversation I had with Matteo just days before his death.

A conversation we had in complete privacy where he had shared with me his deepest hopes for my future.

Hopes he had never told anyone else.

Mateo wants you to know, Sister Teresa said, that his death accomplished exactly what he offered it for.

Your conversion is beginning right now at this very moment and it’s going to lead you to a life of service that will honor both his memory and Carlo’s memory.

They’re working together in heaven, praying for you constantly, and they’re asking you to stop running from God and finally surrender to the love that’s been chasing you all along.

I broke completely in that moment.

Years of grief and anger and resistance crumbling in the face of evidence I couldn’t dismiss or rationalize away.

I sobbed like a child in Sister Teresa’s arms, finally releasing all the pain I had been carrying.

finally acknowledging the reality I had been denying.

That God exists, that he loves me, that Carlo and Mateo were real saints whose deaths had purpose and meaning beyond what I could see from my limited human perspective.

After Sister Teresa left, I opened the third letter from Carlo with trembling hands.

Inside were specific instructions for beginning my journey toward priesthood, including the name of a spiritual director I should contact, a seminary that would accept me despite my late vocation and troubled past, and even details about challenges I would face during my formation and how to overcome them.

Every single detail of that letter proved accurate over the following years.

I entered seminary in 2014, was ordained a priest in 2020, and have spent the past four years ministering to people who struggle with doubt, grief, and intellectual objections to faith.

My story, the story of the atheist computer engineer who became a priest after witnessing the fulfillment of impossible prophecies, has been featured in Catholic media around the world and has inspired countless people to reconsider their own relationship with God.

But perhaps the

most extraordinary development came in 2020 when Carlo Akutus was beatified by Pope Francis in Aisi.

During the investigation for his beatatification, the letters he had written to me, including his precise prophecies about Mateo’s death and my conversion, were examined by Vatican investigators as potential evidence of supernatural knowledge.

The level of detail, the accuracy of the predictions, and the transformative impact on my life were all documented as part of the official cause for his eventual canonization.

Today I serve as the director of a ministry called the Carlo Autis Center for Evangelization Through Reason dedicated to helping intellectuals, scientists, and skeptics encounter the reality of God through a combination of rational argument and authentic witness to supernatural phenomena.

We share Carlos story, Matteo’s story, and my story as evidence that the world isn’t just the closed system of matter and energy that materialist philosophy claims, but rather a reality that’s open to divine action and saturated with meaning.

I keep Carlos letters in a display case in my office along with a photograph of him and Mateo together, both smiling with the joy of young saints who knew they were destined for heaven.

Every day I celebrate mass, I remember Carlos’s tears during the consecration and his absolute certainty that the Eucharist was truly Jesus Christ.

And every time I counsel someone who has lost faith due to suffering or loss, I share how the deaths of two teenage boys became the instrument God used to save my soul and launch me into a life of service I never could have imagined.

If you’ve made it to the end of this testimony, I want to ask you to do something specific right now.

Don’t just close this video and move on with your day.

Take a moment to consider what is God trying to tell you through this story.

What prophecies or callings in your own life have you been running from? What pain or loss have you been using as an excuse to keep God at arms length? Subscribe to this channel if you want to hear more stories of how God works in mysterious and powerful ways in the lives of ordinary people.

But more

importantly, share this video with someone you know who’s struggling with faith, especially someone who has experienced loss or tragedy and is using that pain as a reason to reject God.

Your sharing might be the tool God uses to begin their conversion.

Just as Carlos prophecy was the tool God used to begin mine.

And in the comments below, I want you to share your own story of encountering something you couldn’t explain naturally or a time when someone knew something they shouldn’t have been able to know.

Don’t hold back.

Be vulnerable.

Be specific.

because your testimony might be exactly what another viewer needs to hear to open their heart to God’s reality.

Remember the words that Carlos spoke to me that day in the computer lab 8 years before I became a priest.

God’s plans are higher than our plans and death isn’t the end but a transition to eternal life.

He was right and he and Mateo are proving it every day by the fruit their deaths continue to bear in my life and in the lives of everyone who hears their story.

May blessed Carlo Acutis pray for you.

May his intercession bring you closer to Jesus.

And may you have the courage to say yes to whatever God is calling you to, no matter how impossible it seems from your current perspective.

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