Italian six-year-old takes next step towards sainthood
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Vatican City, Dec 18, 2007 / 11:04 am (CNA).- An Italian girl who died of cancer at the age of six and a half could soon become one of the youngest saints canonized in recent years.

On Monday Pope Benedict XVI signed papers confirming the “heroic virtues” of Antonietta Meo, who was born in Rome in 1930.

According to Vatican Radio, Meo, nicknamed “Nennolinia,” was a cheerful girl who was diagnosed with bone cancer at the age of five and as a result had to have a leg amputated.  She accepted her fate and, wearing a heavy prosthetic leg, continued to play with the other children at her kindergarten. 

She wrote many prayers in the form of letters which, according to Vatican experts, reveal a “truly extraordinary life of mystical union” with God.  In one of the letters she wrote: “Dear baby Jesus, you are holy, you are good. Help me, grant me your grace and give me back my leg. If you don't want to, then may your will be done.”

Meo died on July 3, 1937.

Church authorities are generally cautious about proclaiming young children saints.  But in 1981 the head of the Vatican Congregation for Saints said “'It is possible to speak of a human being being precocious in their sense of good and evil.”

Other young Italian saints canonized in recent decades include St. Domenico Savio, a former student of St. John Bosco who died before his 15th birthday, and St. Maria Goretti, who died in 1902 at the age of eleven after resisting a would-be rapist.  St. Maria Goretti forgave her attacker on her deathbed, and later appeared to him in a dream.

If canonized, Antonietta Meo would be the youngest canonized saint who did not die as a martyr.

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Subscriber comments:
Published by: Debra
Side Lake,MN,USA 01/22/2010 07:48 AM EST
My daughter has faced many ailments..not what I would consider life-threatening..but on-going. Many times I have prayed to Antonnietta over my daughter in her most ill times. She would always get better at that moment.Now my daughter who is eleven just had her second ear surgery in six months..and she has a 50/50 chance of healing thus far.I will say a novena to our Antonnietta in hopes of healing her ear.My daughter and my other children know her and pray to her as well.Sometimes we feel guilty asking for her intercession when there are dying people that need her more. She is an ever-presence in our home and we know that our daughter is where she is because of Antonietta. Pray to this little one.
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Published by: Margaret
Canada 01/27/2009 06:50 PM EST
Last night I had a dream of a Saint Antonietta. I have never heard of this Saint. I have alot of stuff going on in my life with my husband leaving us and marrying another woman. My daughter who is 5 1/2 is very devote to God...Saint Antonietta reminds me alot of my daughter. Praise God that this dream came to me. I know that there is nothing for me to worry about.
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Published by: nora woods
florence kentucky United States of America 01/16/2009 05:16 PM EST
Today in the modern world we have seen what has been done to our children,rather be the deaths of millions from abortion or the impurity of the sexualization of children through clutrual who has embrace impurity. She is the tiny soul to ask for her prayers for our young people today so that many of them can turn to God and receive eternal salvation with him.
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Published by: Joe Kenney
Louisville/KY/USA 07/13/2008 06:43 PM EST
I just came to Ave Maria University in Florida and found her picture and a prayer of hers by our
Blessed Mother's statue. Right away I felt inspired to pray to her and she is already helping me spiritually and in finding a place to live and a job so that I can study. Praise God! I will spread her picture and info.
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