Antonietta Meo

Antonietta Meo, called Nennolina by her family, was born in Rome on 15 December 1930 to Michele and Maria Meo. She was baptized at the Basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, which stood near the family home and remained her parish throughout her short life. Growing up in a practicing Catholic household in the Rome of the 1930s, she took part in parish life and in Catholic Action and showed, even as a small child, a marked and articulate devotion. She began to write or dictate brief letters to Jesus, to the Virgin Mary, and to various saints, treating them as genuine correspondence rather than as play. Those letters, later collected and published, form the principal written record of her inner life.

With a dispensation from the usual age requirement she received her First Holy Communion on 25 December 1935, when she was five years old, and she was confirmed in the spring of 1936. In the latter part of 1936 she developed pain and swelling in her left knee. Physicians diagnosed osteosarcoma. In the spring of 1937 her left leg was amputated in an attempt to arrest the disease. She continued to write after the operation, offering her pain in union with the sufferings of Christ and speaking of a desire to go to heaven. Family and parish witnesses described a child who remained lucid and prayerful rather than withdrawn or theatrical.

The cancer spread. Antonietta Meo died at home in Rome on 3 July 1937, at the age of six. She was buried in Rome; her remains were subsequently transferred to the Basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, where they now rest. A diocesan inquiry into her life and virtues was opened by the Vicariate of Rome in 1972. After examination of her writings and of the testimony of those who had known her, Pope Benedict XVI approved the decree of heroic virtues on 17 December 2007, granting her the title Venerable. She has not been beatified or canonized.

Because of her age at death she is frequently cited as the youngest non-martyr whose heroic virtue has been declared by the Holy See. Popular devotion to her is found especially in Rome and among families confronting childhood cancer or other serious illness in the very young. No official feast day or patronage has been assigned by the Church, as she has not been raised to the honors of the altar.