Child saints

I love it that we have such wonderful child saints in the Church. Today in the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima we remember the three little children who were gifted with a sight of Mary. Once again - as often in the Old Testament - they were shepherding when they saw her. And two of them never made it out of childhood because of the Spanish flu. The other one, Lucia, eventually became a Carmelite nun and lived - incredibly - into the present millennium, dying at 97 in 2005. But the guilelessness and simplicity of childhood means that the testimony of children is particularly powerful (I often think of St Bernadette in that regard). Another little-known child saint actually has her feast day today - Bl Imelda Lambertini OP (c.1321-1333). She was placed in a Dominican monastery and wore their habit. She was devoted to the eucharistic presence of the Lord but she was too young to receive Him. Tradition relates that she died 'in an ecstasy of love' on the Feast of the Ascension. That makes me think of our beloved St Therese.