Inspired by St. Francis of Assisi and by Pope Francis, 2,000 young adults met online to discuss making the economy more responsive to human dignity and more respectful of creation.

Young people did not lose a trust we once had in the clergy; many of us never had that trust in the first place.

In his exhortation on young people, “Christus Vivit” (“Christ Lives”), Pope Francis said Acutis was a role model for young people today who are often tempted by the traps of “self-absorption, isolation and empty pleasure.”

With the much-anticipated release of Pope Francis’s new encyclical “Fratelli Tutti” on Oct. 4, Catholic Christians would do well to revisit his critique of false realism and false nostalgia, and his call for the church to foster a political attitude of faithful and daring dreaming.

Before his death from leukemia in 2006, Acutis was an average teen with an above-average knack for computers. He put that knowledge to use by creating an online database of eucharistic miracles around the world.

A Pew Research Center study released in September shows that teens' religious practice is less than that of their parents. The lessened observance cuts across all denominational lines.