Little Nellie of Holy God

Mary O’Regan remembers a special child

In 1907 in Ireland, a toddler nicknamed 'Little Nellie' was dying tragically of tuberculosis in a Catholic convent. She suggested a barter to her statue of the Infant of Prague: ‘Jesus, if you give me Your ball, I will give you my shoes’.

Her nurse, Miss Hall, told her she could not have it, but Nellie retorted, ‘Him can give it if Him likes!’ A few years later Nellie’s request was granted insofar as Jesus gave her the world to influence when accounts of her holiness and mystical gifts moved the heart of Pope Saint Pius X to issue the decree in 1910 which lowered the age of First Holy Communion from 12 to 7 years.

Little Nellie was the youngest of four children. Her mother died when she was an infant and her father, finding himself unable to cope, placed his tiny tots in care. A convent home was found for Nellie in Cork City. Some believe Irish nuns of that day were excessively harsh, and perhaps they were stern. But during her short stay in their midst, rather than being dominated by them, she directed them to deeper holiness.

Little Nellie was a bright child, but she continually cried out during class, and thinking she was acting up, a nun punished her by taking away her new shoes and socks and forcing her to wear old boots. Soon they found the reason for Nellie’s wailing: she had sustained a severe spinal injury which made sitting still in class agonising. Nellie so lovingly forgave the nun who had disciplined her that the nun’s heart melted. There are a surprising number of these accounts told of Little Nellie by the members of that community.

Nellie’s lungs were found to be badly consumptive; she was given months to live. Frustrated by being confined constantly to her cot, she was induced to offer a novena to the Infant of Prague for a grace of healing, and after nine days of prayer she had such inexplicably renewed strength she was able to walk in the garden, thus inspiring her to befriend the Divine Child. With great love she kept up lively conversations with the statue of the Infant, as if He were her closest friend. She insisted that clean, fresh flowers were the only ones to be kept by the statue of the Infant, refusing a gift of artificial flowers from one of the nuns by telling her, ‘They are too stiff…give Him some of His own flowers.’

'She would come to be known as the Little Violet of the Blessed Sacrament'

Her nurse took Nellie to do the Stations of the Cross. Seeing Christ being nailed to the Cross, Nellie expressed her bewilderment, ‘But why Him letting them do that? Him could stop them if Him liked!’ When she learnt Our Lord let His Blood flow so as to cleanse us of our sin, she cried, ‘Poor Holy God! Oh, poor Holy God!’ This is why she is known today as Little Nellie of Holy God.

In addition to TB, more physical agonies were visited upon her; she was diagnosed as having a diseased jaw. As her jawbone crumbled, there was a terrible smell. She held her crucifix and asked, ‘What is it compared with what He suffered on the Cross for me?’

She demonstrated a gift for knowing if someone had received the Eucharist or not. She flatly told a girl who tried to fool her into thinking she had received the Sacred Species, ‘You did not get Holy God today.’ Once, when her nurse mistakenly thought she had died, Nellie said, ‘Holy God says I am not good enough to go yet.’

An intense desire grew in her to receive the Sacred Species before she died. Yet Little Nellie was still some eight years younger than the age at which children were then given their First Holy Communion, so she said to her nurse: ‘When next you go down to chapel to get Holy God, come back and kiss me. I want Holy God!’ A kiss from her nurse would momentarily satisfy Nellie’s longings. Two months before her death Nellie made her First Holy Communion and on that same day the stench from her jaw disappeared and the smell of incense surrounded her cot.

She would come to be known as the Little Violet of the Blessed Sacrament, but Nellie was no shrinking violet; once when a priest was about to give her a blessing, she instructed him to take off his biretta first: 'Father, take off your cap!'

One of the Sisters told Nellie that when she went to God, she was to ask Our Lord to take her, the Sister, to Heaven, but Nellie responded, ‘Holy God can’t take you Mother, till you are better and do what He wants you to do.’ The nun lived to be 99.

Aged just four years and five months, Little Nellie said she could feel Holy God coming for her, and she breathed her last.

Little Nellie of Holy God was born on August 24, 1903. Perhaps we may remember her on her birthday this year, and pray for the childlike Faith Our Blessed Lord said was necessary for our entry into His Kingdom, and for her special love of the Eucharist.