On July 3, 2008 Pope Benedict XVI certified the cure of the baby Pietro Schillero as the miracle necessary for beatification of St. Thérèse's parents.


St. Thérèse of Lisieux was born in Alençon, France, the daughter of Louis Martin, a watchmaker, and Zélie-Marie Guérin, a lacemaker. Both her parents were very religious. Louis had attempted to become a monk, but was refused because he knew no Latin. Zélie was rejected as a nun because she was considered to have no vocation; instead, she asked God to give her many children and let them all be consecrated to God. Louis and Zélie met in 1858 and married only three months later. They had nine children, of whom only five daughters— Marie, Pauline, Léonie, Céline and Thérèse—survived to adulthood. Thérèse was their youngest child. Zélie died of breast cancer in 1877, when Thérèse was only four years old, and her father moved to Lisieux.

When Thérèse was nine years old, her sister Pauline, who had acted as a "second mother" to her, entered the Carmelite monastery at Lisieux. Thérèse also wanted to enter Carmel, but was told she was too young. At 15, after her sister Marie entered the same Carmelite monastery, Thérèse renewed her attempts to join the order, but the priest-superior of the monastery would not allow this on account of her youth. Later, her father took Thérèse on a pilgrimage to Rome, and during a general audience with Pope Leo XIII, she asked him to allow her to enter at 15, but the Pope said: "Well, my child, do what the superiors decide."

Shortly thereafter, the bishop of Bayeux authorized the prioress to receive Thérèse, and in April 1888 she became a Carmelite postulant. Upon the death of her father, Céline, who had been caring for him, entered the same Carmel as her three sisters, on 14 September 1894; their cousin, Marie Guérin, entered in 1895. Léonie, after several failed attempts, became Sister Françoise-Thérèse, a nun in the Order of the Visitation at Caen.

St. Thérèse is known today because of her spiritual memoir, L'histoire d'une âme ("The Story of a Soul"), which she wrote upon the orders of two prioresses of her monastery.