Thérèse of Lisieux, Saint

Thérèse of Lisieux, Saint

 orig. Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin

(born Jan. 2, 1873, Alençon, France—died Sept. 30, 1897, Lisieux; canonized May 17, 1925; feast day October 1) French Carmelite nun and Doctor of the Church. Born into a devout Roman Catholic family, she entered the convent at Lisieux at age 15, where she was plagued by depression and guilt but was known for her sweetness of temper. At the insistence of the prioress, she wrote an account of her spiritual development, in which she called for an absolute and childlike surrender to God, which she called the Little Way. After her death from tuberculosis at age 24, the book was published as Story of a Soul (1898) and became widely popular, and her burial site at Lisieux became a place of pilgrimage.