Ellen Organ, 'Little Nellie of Holy God'

Life

Ellen Organ was born on 24 August 1903 in Waterford, Ireland, the youngest child of a soldier of the Royal Irish Regiment, William Organ, and his wife Mary. Mary died of tuberculosis when Ellen was barely three; with their father unable to care for them, Ellen and her siblings were placed in industrial schools. In April 1907 Ellen was received at the Convent of the Good Shepherd in Sunday's Well, Cork, where the Good Shepherd Sisters cared for her until her death.

Already terminally ill with spinal tuberculosis (Pott's disease), she had the lower vertebrae and jaw decaying as the disease advanced; she suffered severe pain throughout the months that followed. Yet from her arrival the Sisters were struck by her extraordinary spiritual awareness. She had taught herself to speak of God as 'Holy God' — the name by which she would always be remembered — and seemed to know in a way altogether beyond her years the meaning of the Real Presence, the Crucifixion and the Mass. She begged repeatedly to receive Holy Communion. At the time the Church required children to wait until twelve or so before First Communion, but the local bishop, Dr Thomas O'Callaghan, after meeting Ellen and consulting the chaplain, gave permission, and on 6 December 1907 Ellen received her First Holy Communion at the age of four.

For the two months that remained, the Sisters noted she fell into deep, motionless ecstasies after each communion. She died at Cork on 2 February 1908, the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord. When her body was exhumed a year later for transfer to the cemetery of St Joseph in Cork, witnesses reported it was incorrupt and the white habit unstained. Her story was sent by the Sisters to Rome and is credited as one of the influences on Pope Saint Pius X's decree Quam Singulari (8 August 1910), which lowered the age of First Communion to the age of reason, around seven.