Young woman finds a path to a new life with help of ‘friends’—saints who struggled
Sophia Chamblee came to St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican on Sept. 7 for the canonization Mass honoring the saint who changed her life—St. Carlo Acutis. (Submitted photo)
By John Shaughnessy
If we’re fortunate, our lives are touched by people who influence us with their goodness and their grace, helping us to find something special in ourselves—which then leads us to try to share our gifts in a way that adds goodness and grace to the lives of others.
Then there comes a time when we want—when we need—to honor and thank those people who have influenced us so powerfully.
That’s how 24-year-old Sophia Chamblee felt as she boarded a plane from Indianapolis to Italy in early September.
The member of St. Joan of Arc Parish in Indianapolis was traveling to Rome and Assisi to celebrate and thank the person—the fellow “huge nerd” she called him—who not only gave her life a new direction, but who also helped restore her faith and her connection with the Church.
His impact on Chamblee—who now uses her artistic and social media talents to promote the Catholic faith—was so powerful that she felt the need to stand in front of him and thank him for the hope and joy that he had given her, two qualities that had once been in short supply in her life.
‘In many ways, I saw friends in them’
Before introducing you to the person who influenced Chamblee so dramatically, it seems more important to introduce you first to the person that Chamblee was at the age of 15 and 16.
“When I was in high school, I was very lonely,” she recalls. “A lot of things had happened during that point of my life where it felt I had been abandoned by the Church. So, there was a part of me that was thinking, ‘Why should I remain in a Church that does not look out for me, when it claims to look out for everybody?’ ”
At the same time, Chamblee didn’t give up completely on her faith. Instead, she started exploring it from a different direction, picking up books in her family’s home that related to the Catholic faith, especially books about the saints.
One of the books particularly captured her attention—Saints Behaving Badly by Thomas Craughwell, which focuses on 32 saints whose pasts weren’t always saintly before they devoted their lives to God.
“I always thought that saints were these holier-than-thou people on pedestals,” Chamblee notes. “Their stories of mental and spiritual struggles were a lot of comfort for me.”
Her reading also led her to a story about another saint she could identify with—St. Padre Pio.
“Essentially, he was feeling a lot of isolation, and he was being told by those around him that nobody cared that he was isolated, that nobody cared about the stories he had to tell, nobody cared about the struggle he was going through.
“I saw myself in that. To me, it was like, ‘Well, I care.’ And I know there are other people out there who feel the same way. And I want to show them what I have learned—that the saints went through similar things like us.
“In many ways, I saw friends in them. I saw their struggles and how they rose above those struggles and how they were able to help the Church in their own way, however history demanded it. It made me feel that holiness is attainable. That I can find a community with the saints.”
Her connection with the saints took an artistic turn in high school when she learned to draw and she focused on drawing saints.
“I was that art girl in the back of the classroom, doodling in her textbook. For a while, to my parents and everyone else, it was ‘just a thing she’s doing.’ Then there was this self-portrait I drew one time that inspired my parents. When I graduated, they bought me an iPad that I still use to this day where I am able to draw digitally. That really helped my artistic journey.”
It was a journey that was just beginning, leading her to the one person whose influence changed everything for her.
A message for people who feel lost, lonely
She became aware of Carlo Acutis when she was a student at Franciscan University of Steubenville in Steubenville, Ohio.
“I first heard about Carlo Acutis during COVID,” Chamblee says. “That was when he was beatified. He really stood out to me because he was a nerd. And I am also a huge nerd. I was a huge Star Wars fan growing up, and that’s drifted off into other things. I really saw myself in Carlo. When he was 6 years old, he was in a Spiderman costume. When I was that age, I was dressed as Darth Vader’s apprentice or something. So, I totally get it,” she says with a laugh.
The more she learned about him, the more she was impressed—and felt a bond with him.
“He wanted to use the internet to evangelize. And that’s what I wanted to do as well,” she says. “Maybe not in the same way as him. He built a website documenting eucharistic miracles. That way people had all the information they needed in one place.
“I saw myself in Carlo as having that dream of using the Internet as a tool to evangelize. I’ve used the Internet to learn how to draw, how to film, how to use different apps. I wanted to use it to talk about Catholic saints. So, he kind of became the patron saint of my mission.”
Since graduating from college in 2023, Chamblee has created the website, www.playgroundsaints.shop, where she sells stickers, prints and keychains featuring the saints.
She also shares her focus on saints on the social media platform Instagram @playgroundsaints. She posts stories and self-described “goofy” videos about the saints, hoping to show their humanity.
Her efforts have led to about 63,000 followers and an invitation to take part in the Vatican’s Jubilee of Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers in Rome in late July—a gathering that drew more than 1,000 people from more than 70 countries.
“Being an influencer was not my plan, but I was invited,” she says. “When I got there, there were other influencers who recognized me and said, ‘Oh, my gosh, I love your stuff.’ Then I had fans approaching me. I’m not used to that. When you work behind a screen, you have no idea how many people you are inspiring until you meet them firsthand.
“It blows my mind. I feel a sense of accomplishment. I’m able to reach out to people all over the world. I’m doing something right here, and I’m helping people.
“There are plenty of ideas I have for content, but I ask myself, ‘Is that pointing to me or is that pointing to the saints and heaven?’ If it’s pointing to me, that’s not the goal.”
The goal is clear for her.
“I hope to prove to people that sainthood is possible for anybody. That no matter what you’ve done or where you’ve been or what background you come from, you can achieve sainthood,” she says. “It does take work on your end, but it is possible.
“I especially want to tell that to people who really see sainthood as something that’s not attainable for them, as well as for the people who feel just lost and lonely. That you can pull yourself out of this. And God can give you the grace to pull yourself out of it. Because that’s what helped me. In many ways, I want to return that to other people.”
That hope also led her to return to Italy just several weeks after the Jubilee of Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers.
She was in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican on Sept. 7 when Pope Leo XIV celebrated the canonization Mass for
St. Pier Giorgio Frassati and St. Carlo Acutis, the Church’s first millennial saint, who died of leukemia at the age of 15, the age when Chamblee was lonely and struggling with her faith.
‘That was a very powerful moment’
“I had to go,” she recalls about being there for the canonization. “For me, it was like hearing that a friend of yours was getting an award and you wanted to be there for the ceremony to support him. That’s the way it was for me. I had to be there to see him be canonized.
“Carlo’s family was up there. His brother was reading the first reading. Pope Leo was giving the announcement that Carlo Acutis and Pier Giorgio are saints. Seeing all of that happen and being surrounded by tens of thousands of people who were there for the same thing, it showed me the Church is real and it’s alive and it’s young.”
It’s a view of the Church that gives her joy.
“I see a newfound energy in the Church that I really didn’t see very much growing up. There is very much a spiritual awakening. It is a re-embrace of the faith, but our generations are doing it in a way that fits us. We’re doing it through the Internet. We’re doing it through social media. We’re doing it through local community. And that’s something that I didn’t think I’d ever see. It gives me a lot of hope.”
Her focus on the saints has also led her to a closer relationship with Christ.
“It’s a lot stronger than it used to be,” she says. “I see him as a familiar friend and as a guide. Christ has a vocation for all of us. He certainly had vocations for the saints.”
She pauses before adding, “I feel like I’m at a point where I’m figuring out what he wants me to do. I know that what I’m doing now, I won’t be doing forever. When you figure out what your vocation is, when you figure out what God wants to do through you, I think that’s where you feel the most alive.”
Her recent trips to Rome and the Vatican brought all those feelings alive for her again. Still, there was one more trip in Italy that she needed to make.
Shortly after the canonization, she traveled to Assisi, to the church where the body of St. Carlo Acutis lies in repose in a glass tomb.
“I went there because I wanted to see Carlo for myself,” she says. “I wanted to see the person I had worked so hard to see canonized. When I got to Assisi, it was very, very busy around the church where he was. It had already hit me that this was real when I was at the canonization. But seeing him in the tomb—and you could see him fully—that was when it was like, Carlo is real for me.
“Just being able to see him up-close and seeing he’s wearing jeans, and he’s wearing sneakers, like me. That was a very powerful moment.”
A moment to say thank you to the saint who changed her life. †
