As I See It: Sainthood

August 5, 2024 Victor Rozek

I’ve been pondering sainthood lately. Not my own, just to be clear, but rather the concept and qualifications for such a venerable designation. The most notable modern-day example would doubtless be Mother Teresa who, after a lifetime of service and sacrifice, was canonized in 2016.

The Catholic Church holds the franchise for saintly designations with over 10,000, many of whom were martyred for their faith. But it was the newest entrant who caught my attention. His name is Carlo Acutis, and he died in 2006 of acute leukemia at the tender age of 15. I have to admit he beat some long odds to even be considered for sainthood. First of all, he’s a millennial, and hardly old enough, one would think, to have lived a life of “heroic virtue” which is one of the requirements. Second, he’s described as an Italian computer whiz, and touted as the “patron saint of the Internet.” And if there’s anything less saintly than the Internet, I’d be hard put to identify it.

In fact, as I think of groups of people that I would not normally equate with saintliness they would include millennials, (who have managed to carve out a generational reputation as being entitled, arrogant, and petulant), and IT whizzes (whose deities are more likely to be equipped with screens and keyboards than spiritual components). But God works in mysterious ways.

Carlo was a website designer who, according to Wikipedia, “documented Eucharistic miracles and approved Marian apparitions.” The latter was probably not too strenuous a task since there are only 10 officially approved visitations of the Virgin Mary, although many more claims have been offered for official consideration. He also managed websites for local Catholic organizations, and was intent on using the media to evangelize and spread the gospel. Carlo began work on his website in 2004 and it was officially launched in 2006, sadly only days before his death.

Regardless, his interest in, and mastery of computer science began early and was remarkably fruitful. According to the Associated Press, “while still in elementary school, Acutis taught himself to code using a university computer science textbook, and then learned how to edit videos and create animation.”

But the toughest part of achieving the lofty recognition of sainthood may be the requirement for two verified miracles – and here’s the catch – in Acutis’ case to be performed after his death.

Here the waters get a bit murky, possibly conflating association with causation. The first miracle involved a 7-year-old Brazilian boy who suffered from an uncommon pancreatic disorder. Reportedly, he was healed after coming into contact with, what is described as, an Acutis relic – a piece of one of his T-shirts. Full disclosure: my old T-shirts, according to my wife, would immediately have disqualified me from any consideration for sainthood.

The second miracle, recently officially recognized, involved a young woman who suffered severe head trauma after falling from her bicycle. Her mother, a woman from Costa Rica, travelled to Assisi, Italy where Acutis is entombed, to pray for her healing. And her daughter promptly began showing signs of improvement.

All of which explains how the IT community is on the precipice of being able to boast having its first saint – not something I ever thought I’d live to see. Which got me thinking: What if I had papal powers? Who might I nominate for IT sainthood?

The first would be my former manager, Sheila Dummer, who hired me twice at two different companies, which certainly qualifies as a miracle in and of itself. I recall an incident decades ago where there was some sort of major screwup and we were called in for a postmortem with Sheila’s boss. It quickly became evident that her manager was intent on finding someone to blame. He kept asking who worked swing shift and who was responsible for the mess. But Sheila was having none of it. All she was interested in was discovering how the process failed. She had set up operational procedures which were designed to accomplish the necessary tasks regardless of who was at work. She wanted to identify any deficiencies in the process and fix them, not punish the person.

She was also flat out brilliant. Before the second company we worked for was purchased by IBM she managed the largest HP3000 shop west of the Mississippi. We had 11 distributed systems, each supporting a different function within the company. The systems had to be backed up daily, and every evening users requested various jobs to be run – often by calling their favorite programmer who had nothing to do with operations – expecting to see reports on their desks in the morning.

But in those days most people were not sophisticated IT users and they frequently requested jobs with incorrect parameters, or updates which took too many hours to run, preventing backups from finishing in a timely manner thus tying up the system in the morning. Scheduling was a constant struggle, and the quality of IT services was marginal.

Sheila decided to centralize all computer operations and wrote an automated scheduling system that created a single point of interface within computer operations allowing one scheduler to manage job requirements for all eleven systems. She provided user training, and disabled modem access to legacy systems so as not to interfere with backups and evening operations.

In short order, accuracy, timeliness, and user satisfaction soared; confusion and chaos dwindled. The results were nothing short of miraculous.

My second candidate would be none other than Tim Pickett Morgan himself. Yes, he’s my boss and the driving force behind IT Jungle, but before you accuse me of a shameless act of self-ingratiation, consider how difficult it might have been to sustain the site given what transpired these last five years. Covid, an economic slump, revenue squeeze, and an uncertain future.

Tim could have folded, like so many others. Or, he could have laid off some of the writers. Or, with very little cost or effort, he could have used AI to write articles for IT Jungle. But he did none of those things. He retained his staff and remained steadfastly supportive, putting people over profit. In these times of free-range greed that is indeed miraculous.

If there is one thing (besides IT) that Acutis, Sheila, and Tim have in common, is that they were/are unfailingly kind. Acutis has a long documented history of kind acts toward people and animals alike. Sheila and Tim have the gratitude of people who have had the privilege of knowing and working with them.

I recall once hearing a Buddhist discuss organized religion. His opinion was that if you could be kind, you probably didn’t need religion. And if you could not, religion wouldn’t help you. That’s a high bar, and I am honored to know not one, but two IT professionals who clear that bar with ease.

Editor’s Note: I believe in enlightened self-interest, and I practice it as best I can. While I certainly put a lot into The Four Hundred in the beginning decades years, and a lot more than I ever took out, and I have always tried to maximize the number of people at the table based on the money we can generate. In more recent years, when I needed more, I was able to repay a good portion my earlier generosity back. I have always known that what we could build together was stronger because it was far more than me, and that we would stay in the market longer if I behaved accordingly. If I could pay 1,000 employees, or 1 million, I would. — TPM

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