Saint Therese of the Little Flower

Therese of Lisieux (2 January 1873 - 30 September 1897), or Saint Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, born Marie-Francoise-Therese Martin, was a French Carmelite nun. She is also known as "The Little Flower of Jesus."

She felt an early call to religious life, and overcoming various obstacles, in 1888 at the age of 15, Therese became a nun and joined two of her older sisters in the cloistered Carmelite community of Lisieux, Normandy. After nine years as a Carmelite religious, having fulfilled various offices such as sacristan and assistant to the novice mistress, and having spent the last eighteen months in Carmel in a “night of faith,” she died of tuberculosis at the age of 24. The impact of her posthumous publications, including her memoir The Story of a Soul, was great, and she rapidly became one of the most popular saints of the twentieth century. Pope Pius XI made her the "star of his pontificate."She was beatified in 1923, and canonized in 1925.

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