St. Therese of Lisieux

On October 1 the Church honors Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face (1873-1897), the Carmelite of Lisieux whose posthumous autobiography, Histoire d'une âme, taught the "Little Way" — spiritual childhood, confidence in God's mercy, and sanctity through ordinary hidden acts. She died of tuberculosis at twenty-four, in the Carmel where she had lived for nine years, and within a generation she was one of the most venerated saints of the modern Church.

Thérèse was born Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin in Alençon on January 2, 1873, the last of nine children of Louis and Zélie Martin. Her parents — themselves canonized together by Pope Francis in 2015, the first married couple raised to the altars — had raised their children in a household of daily Mass and nightly Rosary. After Zélie's death in 1877 the family moved to Lisieux, where the young Thérèse grew up at Les Buissonnets. At fifteen she obtained papal permission to enter the Carmel of Lisieux younger than the rule allowed; she professed on September 8, 1890, the feast of the Nativity of Mary. Her death came on September 30, 1897; her last words were "My God, I love you."

The Basilica of St. Thérèse at Lisieux, built 1929-1954 and consecrated in 1954, is France's second-greatest pilgrimage destination after Lourdes. Her relics lie in the basilica; the Carmel where she lived and died stands nearby; Les Buissonnets, the family home, is preserved as a sanctuary. She was beatified in 1923 and canonized on May 17, 1925, by Pius XI. In 1927 she was named patroness of the missions alongside Francis Xavier — a cloistered nun who never left France, honoured for her prayer and suffering for the missions. In 1944 Pius XII named her secondary patroness of France. On October 19, 1997, at the centenary of her death, Pope John Paul II declared her a Doctor of the Church — the third woman and the youngest ever named.

The wider Teresian pilgrimage reaches beyond Normandy. The Martin family home at Alençon and the Basilica of Notre-Dame where her parents were married and she was baptized mark the shrine of the first canonized family. The National Shrine of the Little Flower at Wakaw in Saskatchewan is the chief Canadian pilgrimage in her honour. Her relics have travelled the world — a national tour of Britain in 2009 drew more than a quarter of a million venerations, and her relics crossed North America in 2024-2025 — but the fixed goal is Lisieux, where the Little Way was lived and where the young Carmelite's body rests beneath the basilica dome.