What are children’s saints like? Father Miguel Ángel Requena, Dominican and director of the Parents’ School of the Dominican College in Valencia, presents the example of children’s saints in his book “The Saints: a friend for each day. The Christian year for children”. Father Requena is headmaster of the nursery and primary school attached to the College and has already written seven lives of saints in comic strip format. For children, “saints are familiar persons he explains to SIR -. They are important figures, someone who had lived before us and who brings us a message of goodness so that we make use of it. They also help us, from heaven, to love Jesus”. But are the saints presented in the book only heroic models, or are they also accessible people? “The truth explains Father Requena is that almost all the saints are accessible and close to us; they are individuals who not only performed extraordinary actions in the past, but who also loved God deeply. I’ve chosen those with whom children can more easily relate”. Commenting on certain ‘secular’ threats to the public expression of the faith, Father Requena says that “as yet this is not a risk we run in Spain. There are so many references to Christianity that children find in the streets, at school, and especially in so many families and in catechesis. Even if some symbols are removed from classrooms, as is happening in France, there still remains a lot to be removed”. Does a knowledge of the saints make the new generations better? “I hope so! For the time being only the more popular saints are familiar. And there are saints for all tastes: from the great adventurers for Christ to the hidden holiness of the hermit or beggar”.
