This article examines the promotion of the cults of the parents of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux by their daughters, nuns of the Carmel of Lisieux, from the time of Thérèse’s death in 1897 until the late 1950s. Louis and Zélie Martin were made saints in the first joint canonisation of spouses in the history of […]
Lucie Delarue-Mardrus was at the heart of daring interwar Paris, where she used her influence to defend those left behind by ‘progress’
The First World War saw some of the richest (and kitschest) pieces of material devotional culture produced by the Carmel of Lisieux
Having just waded through all 644 pages of the Diary of Saint Maria Faustyna Kowalska (1905-1938), Polish nun of the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy and founder of the internationally popular Divine Mercy devotion, I’ve resolved to try to make sense of it in the context of the modern history of popular Catholic culture
The archives du Carmel de Lisieux have recently launched a new website, putting materials relating to the life and posthumous fame of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux online for the first time. The convent was the saint’s home during the last nine years of her life and its archives have been the guardians of her legacy ever since
Chapter published in Peter Clarke and Tony Claydon (eds), Studies in Church History 47: Sainthood and Sanctity (Woodbridge, 2011), pp. 376-89
It may be popular among ordinary Catholics, but the cult of St Thérèse serves the hierarchy’s political purposes well
Saint Thérèse of Lisieux is one of the most popular saints of the modern Catholic Church, holding a number of prestigious titles and being the focus of a wildly successful popular cult. A Carmelite nun at fifteen years old, she died only nine years later, producing in the intervening years plays, poems, prayers, a large correspondence and, most importantly, an autobiography
Sophia Deboick 