Thank you Ellen Organ

If it wasn’t for a young girl named Ellen Organ, we probably would not have received our First Holy Communion at such a young age. She was the fourth child of an Irish Catholic family, born in 1903. Her mother Mary died of tuberculosis when Ellen was just 4, while her father William had joined the British Army and had to place the children in an Institute. Ellen was very much loved by the group of nuns that took care of the children. But an accident caused her a fracture in her spinal chord. She could hardly walk but she never complained. She used to be carried most of the time. She also developed at a very young age a special affection towards the Blessed Sacrament. She desired so much to receive Holy Communion, but at that time the age for reception of the Eucharist was 12. So she used to ask those who received Communion to come to kiss her, this way she was in some way participating in the Eucharist. When she was 5 years old, she developed a severe pain in her jaw and suffered from tuberculosis. By 1907, the nuns knew that she was not going to live much longer, and Ellen got permission to make her first confession and receive her First Holy Communion. She also received Confirmation, and received Communion 32 times before she died in February 1908. It was at that time that Pope St. Pius X was considering reducing the age of Communion, and when he heard of Ellen Organ’s story he told his secretary ‘this is the sign that I was waiting for.’ And with the decree ‘Quam Singulari’ he lowered the age of Holy Communion from 12 to 7 years.