Saintly Children

In Vatican City this week on the feast day of St. Agnes, two chaste white lambs will be brought to the Holy Father from the Church of St. Agnes in the Via Nomentana in Rome. Given his blessing, the gentle animals will be coddled until Easter when their wool is shorn, woven into the pallia which the Pope gives to patriarchs, primates and archbishops as a symbol of their office.

Centuries ago in Rome Christian-born Agnes swore herself to virginity, miraculously preserved her maidenhood despite an attempted outrage, was martyred by decapitation at the age of 12. Youngest child saint of all. little St. Hugh of Lincoln was crucified, supposedly by Jews, in 1255 at the age of 9. In Jesuit America last week a Benedictine named Bonaventure Schwinn produced a mo,dern "Who's Who of Child Candidates for Beatification."

Most recent candidate, introduced in Rome by Canon Mugnier from Paris, is Anne de Guigne who "died in the odor of sanctity at the age of 11" in 1922. She was a descendant of St. Louis, King of France. The special virtue of Maria Filippetto (1912-27) was "patient suffering for the love of God." Antonito Martinez Herrera (1920-29) was known for his "humility and charity." Guy de Font-galland (1913-25), son of an aristocratic Parisian family, made his First Communion at 7, wished to become a missionary priest but believed he heard a voice say: "My little Guy, I shall take you; you will die young; you will not be My priest; I desire to make you My angel." Marie Therese Wang (1917-32) is called the "Rose of China."

The cultured, well-to-do Wang family of Peiping named their daughter Ta-jun ("All Gracious"). When, aged 11 and just out of elementary school, the child was found to be dangerously tuberculous, they put her in the care of the Sisters of St. Michael's Hospital. Ta-jun quickly became interested in Catholicism, was baptized in 1929. She chose the name Marie for the Blessed Virgin, Therese for the Little Flower of Lisieux, whose career she was to duplicate at many points. The 33 months pale, pretty Marie Therese Wang was a Christian on earth is the simple story of a precociously virtuous soul, a saint seen in small, sharp detail through a minifying glass. She never looked at her Missal because "books are a distraction to me. ... I have so many things to tell Him." At 12 she was impatient to become a Daughter of Charity. At 14 she vowed herself to chastity. Her lingering death from tuberculosis was a summing up of all she knew and much that she felt only intuitively of Catholic belief. Marie Therese Wang's biographer, Rev. Basil Stegmann of the Benedictine Order, lists eight cases which the Roman Catholic Church may or may not judge to be miracles supporting the Rose of China's candidacy for beatification. Among them: two cures (tuberculosis, cholera) ; one happy death; one escape from brigands; an instance in which someone received payment of an old debt of $25,000.

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