Saint Therese of Lisieux: A Gateway

The new "family reliquary," containing relics of St. Therese of Lisieux and of her parents, Blessed Louis and Zelie Martin, in its permanent home at the Carmelite Monastery in Philadelphia.  The reliquary has been placed in the shrine of St. Therese in the chapel, in the exact place where the "traveling reliquary" of St. Therese was venerated by an estimated ten thousand people in 1999.  Fittingly, this is also the place where, until 1997, crowds prayed before the portrait of St. Therese painted by her sister, Celine, and given to the Philadelphia Carmel in 1907 by Miss Pauline Wilcox.  In the background is the statue of St. Therese as a Doctor of the Church. November 16, 2013.