Saint Therese of the Child Jesus

Virgin and Doctor of the Church

Feast Day

October 1

Life

1873–1897

Canonized

1925

Doctor of the Church

1997

Order

Order of Discalced Carmelites

Born

Alençon, France

Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin, ninth child of Saints Louis and Zélie Martin, was born at Alençon, Normandy, on 2 January 1873. After her mother's death in 1877 the family moved to Lisieux. She received an extraordinary grace at Christmas 1886, which she called her conversion, and at fifteen, having petitioned both her bishop and Pope Leo XIII at a private audience in 1887, was admitted to the Discalced Carmel of Lisieux on 9 April 1888, where two of her sisters had preceded her.

Her nine years in religion were outwardly hidden. As mistress of novices she trained the small community in what she called the Little Way, a path of complete confidence in the merciful love of God expressed through fidelity in the smallest acts of charity. In 1894-1895, on the order of her prioress, she began to write the autobiographical Manuscripts that, gathered after her death as Story of a Soul, became one of the most widely read spiritual works of the twentieth century.

From Holy Thursday 1896 she suffered a tubercular hemoptysis and a long final illness, accompanied by a profound trial of faith. She died at Lisieux on 30 September 1897 at the age of twenty-four. Pope Pius XI beatified her on 29 April 1923 and canonized her on 17 May 1925; in 1927 he proclaimed her Patroness of the Missions, equal with Saint Francis Xavier. Pope Saint John Paul II declared her Doctor of the Church on 19 October 1997, the centenary year of her death, in the apostolic letter Divini Amoris Scientia, the third woman so honored.