Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin was born in Alençon on January 2, 1873, the youngest of the nine children of Louis and Zélie Martin, who are themselves canonized saints. Her mother died when she was four and the family moved to Lisieux. In 1887 she travelled to Rome with her father and asked Leo XIII in person for permission to enter Carmel early; she was admitted in April 1888 at fifteen.
Inside the Carmel of Lisieux she lived an outwardly ordinary life and wrote, under obedience, the manuscripts published after her death as Story of a Soul. She died of tuberculosis on September 30, 1897, at twenty-four. Pius XI canonized her in 1925 and named her patroness of the missions in 1927; St. John Paul II declared her a Doctor of the Church in 1997.
Her relics rest in the chapel of the Carmel. The Basilica of St. Thérèse above the town, consecrated in 1954, is one of the largest churches built in France in the twentieth century. Lisieux is about two hours west of Paris and is not one of our hubs, but it belongs on any French route that passes through Paris toward Lourdes.
