Young saints: 12 who became holy before they turned 25
A teenage coder, a mountaineer, a Mohawk woman, two shepherd children and a girl who led an army. Who they were, how young they died, and the day the Church remembers each one.
The MySavior teamUpdated · 10 min read
For You are my hope, O Lord GOD, my confidence from my youth.
Psalm 71:5 · BSB
Let no one despise your youth, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.
1 Timothy 4:12 · BSB
The best-known young saints today are Carlo Acutis, who died of leukemia at 15, and Pier Giorgio Frassati, a mountaineer from Turin who died at 24; Pope Leo XIV canonized them together on September 7, 2025. Behind them stands a long line of others who reached holiness before 25, from Agnes of Rome in the fourth century to Thérèse of Lisieux, Kateri Tekakwitha and the shepherd children of Fátima.
None of them had time to found a religious order or fill a library. Most went to school, played, got sick and died before anyone outside their town knew their names. What they left was smaller and harder to forget: a way of loving God at the age when most of us were still working out who we were.
Below are twelve of them, eleven canonized saints and one blessed, with the age each one died and the day the Church remembers them. Their status is as of October 2026.
Died at 15 · canonized 2025 · October 12
Carlo Acutis
Carlo was born in London in 1991 and grew up in Milan, a boy who loved computers and video games. He also went to Mass and to adoration as often as he could, and spent years gathering notes on Eucharistic miracles from around the world. A website built from them went online on October 4, 2006. By then he was ill, and acute leukemia took him within days. He died in Monza on October 12, aged 15.
Pope Leo XIV canonized him in 2025, the first millennial saint. His body rests in Assisi, in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, where pilgrims pray beside him.
Died at 24 · canonized 2025 · July 4
Pier Giorgio Frassati
Canonized at the same Mass as Carlo, Pier Giorgio was the son of the owner of the Turin newspaper La Stampa. He climbed mountains with his friends, joined the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul at 17, became a lay Dominican, and gave his money and his time to the poorest families in Turin. In 1925 he caught polio, possibly from the sick he visited, and died a few days later, aged 24.
His parents expected the city’s important people at the funeral. The streets filled instead with the poor he had quietly helped. On a photograph from his last climb, a month before he died, he had written Verso l’alto: “to the heights.”
Died at 24 · canonized 1925 · October 1
Thérèse of Lisieux
Thérèse Martin wanted to be a Carmelite so badly that at 14, on a pilgrimage to Rome, she knelt before Pope Leo XIII and asked him herself. She entered the Carmel of Lisieux at 15 and never left it. Her holiness was made of small things: kindness to a sister who got on her nerves, a dull chore done without complaint. She called it her “little way.”
Tuberculosis killed her at 24. Her memoir, Story of a Soul, went around the world, and in 1997 John Paul II named her a Doctor of the Church.
Died at about 24 · canonized 2012 · July 14
Kateri Tekakwitha
Kateri was born around 1656 in a Mohawk village in what is now upstate New York, to a Mohawk father and an Algonquin Christian mother. Smallpox killed her parents and her brother when she was about four, and left her face scarred and her eyes weak. Baptized on Easter Sunday 1676, at 19, she met such hostility at home that she left for the Christian village of Kahnawake, near Montreal, where she prayed, fasted and cared for others until her death in 1680.
Benedict XVI canonized the Lily of the Mohawks in 2012, the first Native American saint. Her day is July 14 in the United States and April 17 in Canada.
Died at 14 · canonized 1954 · May 6
Dominic Savio
Dominic made his First Communion at seven, when most children waited until twelve, and wrote down resolutions that day. One read “Death rather than sin.” At 12 he met John Bosco, who took him into his Oratory in Turin. He was no dreamer: when two classmates planned to settle a quarrel with stones, he stood between them holding a crucifix until they gave up.
He fell ill and died at his parents’ home at 14. Bosco wrote his life soon afterward, and Pius XII canonized him in 1954. He is a patron of choirboys and altar servers.
Died at 11 · canonized 1950 · July 6
Maria Goretti
Maria was the daughter of poor farm workers near Nettuno, south of Rome. In July 1902, Alessandro Serenelli, 20, whose family shared their house, tried to rape her. She refused him, and he stabbed her fourteen times. She died the next day, aged 11, after forgiving him and saying she wanted him with her in heaven.
In prison he eventually repented, and on his release he asked her mother’s forgiveness. She gave it. He ended his days as a Capuchin lay brother. Pius XII canonized Maria in 1950 before about half a million people, her mother among them.
Died at 10 and 9 · canonized 2017 · February 20
Francisco and Jacinta Marto
In 1917 this brother and sister were keeping sheep with their cousin Lúcia near Fátima, in Portugal, when, they said, the Virgin Mary appeared to them, beginning on May 13. Francisco was quiet and liked to slip away to pray alone. Jacinta, the youngest of the three, took the call to pray for sinners to heart and offered small sacrifices for them.
Both caught the influenza that swept the world in 1918. Francisco died in 1919, aged 10; Jacinta in 1920, aged 9. Pope Francis canonized them at Fátima on May 13, 2017, a hundred years after the first apparition.
Died at 14 · canonized 2016 · February 10
José Sánchez del Río
During the Cristero War, when Mexico’s government moved against the Church, José begged to join the Catholic rebels. His mother said no, and at first so did the general. He kept asking until they made him the troop’s flag bearer. In January 1928, when the general’s horse was killed in battle, José gave him his own and was captured.
On February 10, 1928, his captors cut the soles of his feet and made him walk through his hometown, Sahuayo, to the cemetery. They offered to spare him if he would shout against Christ. He would only shout “¡Viva Cristo Rey!”: long live Christ the King. They killed him there, aged 14. Pope Francis canonized him in 2016.
Blessed · died at 18 · October 29
Chiara Badano
Chiara grew up in Sassello, a small town in the hills of Liguria, in northern Italy. She loved tennis, swimming, hiking, music and dancing, and her faith grew through the Focolare Movement, whose founder, Chiara Lubich, gave her a second name: Luce, “light.” At 16, a pain in her shoulder during a tennis match turned out to be bone cancer. She turned down morphine to stay clear-headed, and offered her suffering to Jesus.
She died on October 7, 1990, at 18, telling her mother to be happy, because she was. She was beatified in Rome in 2010, one step short of canonization.
Died at 23 · canonized 1726 · June 21
Aloysius Gonzaga
Aloysius was the eldest son of an Italian marquis, raised for court and for war. He wanted neither. He had received his First Communion from Saint Charles Borromeo, and at 17 he signed away his inheritance and joined the Jesuits in Rome.
In 1591 plague swept through the city. Aloysius nursed the sick in one of its hospitals, caught the disease himself, and died on June 21, aged 23. In 1729 the Church named him patron of young people and students, and in 1926 Pius XI called him the patron of all Christian youth.
Died at 12 or 13 · martyred around 304 · January 21
Agnes of Rome
Agnes is one of the oldest young saints and one of the best loved. A girl of 12 or 13 in Rome during the persecution under the emperor Diocletian, around 304, she would not give up her faith or her promise to belong to Christ, and she was put to death. Before the century was out, Saint Ambrose was writing about her courage.
Her name sounds like agnus, Latin for lamb, so she is painted with one. Every January 21 the pope blesses two lambs, and their wool is woven into the pallium, the white woolen band he gives to new archbishops. She is buried beside the Via Nomentana, under the church that bears her name.
Died at about 19 · canonized 1920 · May 30
Joan of Arc
Joan was a farmer’s daughter from Domrémy, in eastern France. From about 13 she heard voices she believed came from Saint Michael, Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret. At 17 she persuaded the uncrowned king to send her with his army, lifted the siege of Orléans and stood beside him when he was crowned at Reims.
Captured by the Burgundians and handed over to the English, she was condemned by a church court for heresy and burned at the stake in Rouen on May 30, 1431, aged about 19. A later church inquiry overturned the verdict, and Benedict XV canonized her in 1920.
What they have in common
1 Timothy 4:12
Let no one despise your youth, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.
1 Timothy 4:12 · BSB
Paul wrote this to Timothy, a young pastor easily looked down on for his age. He did not tell him to wait until he was older. He told him to live in a way nobody could dismiss.
Every name on this list took that at its word.
On your iPhone
A young saint on your Home Screen
Eight of the twelve have a day in MySavior’s Saint of the Day calendar: Agnes on January 21, Francisco and Jacinta on February 20, Kateri on April 17, Dominic Savio on May 6, Joan of Arc on May 30, Aloysius on June 21, Maria Goretti on July 6 and Thérèse on October 1. On those days the widget on your Home Screen or Lock Screen shows their name, and it changes by itself at midnight.
You can browse the whole calendar month by month, starting with the saints of October.
Sun 8 Blessed John Duns Scotus
9:41
Saint of the Day on your Home ScreenMySavior’s Saint of the Day widget shows a saint or feast for each day of the year, with a short biography of each one in the app.
★ Rated 4.9 on the US App StoreLoved by Christians in 60+ countries8,000+ people every month
A small practice for this week
Pick one name from this list whose age is close to yours, or to the age of a young person you love. Read a little more about them, then ask them by name to pray for you, or for that child, grandchild or student. If you teach or raise young people, tell them one of these stories this week, with the ordinary parts left in. Saints who climbed mountains and played video games are easier to follow than statues.
Keep the saints close all year
Bible verse and prayer widgets you design yourself, a countdown to the feasts of the year, and a saint for every day.
★ Rated 4.9 on the US App StoreLoved by Christians in 60+ countries8,000+ people every month
Questions
Who is the youngest saint?
Jacinta Marto of Fátima, who died in 1920 at the age of 9, is the youngest saint the Catholic Church has canonized who did not die a martyr. Her brother Francisco died at 10. Some martyrs, such as the children killed in the early persecutions, were younger still.
Is Carlo Acutis a saint?
Yes. Pope Leo XIV canonized Carlo Acutis on September 7, 2025, in St. Peter’s Square, together with Pier Giorgio Frassati. His feast is October 12, the day he died in 2006, and his body rests in Assisi.
What is the difference between a saint and a blessed?
A blessed has been beatified: the Church declares that the person is in heaven and allows them to be honored, usually in a particular region or religious family. Beatification normally follows one approved miracle (martyrs need none), and canonization, after a second, makes the person a saint for the whole Church. In this list, Chiara Badano is a blessed; the others are canonized saints.
Who is the patron saint of young people?
Aloysius Gonzaga, who died at 23 nursing plague victims in Rome, was named patron of young people and students in 1729, and Pius XI called him the patron of all Christian youth in 1926. Many young Catholics today also ask the prayers of Carlo Acutis and Pier Giorgio Frassati.
