Thérèse of Lisieux

Thérèse Martin

Lived

1873–1897

Era

Modern

Where

Lisieux, France

Tradition

Roman Catholic

The little way

A French girl who entered the Carmelite convent at Lisieux at fifteen after petitioning the pope for permission, lived there nine unremarkable years, and died of tuberculosis at twenty-four having written a memoir at her superior's instruction.

Why it matters

The memoir, circulated after her death, made her one of the most popular saints in the modern Catholic world within twenty-five years. Her "little way" holds that holiness is available in ordinary small acts done with love, and requires no extraordinary vocation — a claim with obvious appeal to people whose lives contain nothing dramatic. The manuscripts also record that her last eighteen months were spent in complete loss of any sense of God, which she did not tell her community about at the time.

All the figures, from the apostolic age to the present, or the timeline they stand in.