This week Cardinal Antonio Cañizares Llovera, the Vatican official responsible for worship and the sacraments, suggested that children be allowed to receive first Holy Communion before their seventh birthday.
Today, he said, "children live immersed in a thousand difficulties, surrounded by a difficult environment that does not encourage them to be what God wants them to be”.
A child's first Communion, he said, was "like the beginning of a journey with Jesus... the beginning of a friendship destined to last and to grow for his entire life".
