Saint Therese of Lisieux: A Gateway

Pope Paul VI

 The Vatican announced today that Pope Francis has approved the promulgation of the decree for the beatification of Pope Paul VI, formerly Giovanni Cardinal Montini.  The ceremony of beatification is scheduled for October 19, 2014, Mission Sunday.  It will happen at the concusion of the Third Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family, according to Vatican Radio.  That date is the 17th anniversary of Pope John Paul II's proclamation of St. Therese of Lisieux as a Doctor of the Church and the sixth anniversary of the beatification of her parents, Blessed Louis and Zelie Martin.  Both these ceremonies also fell on Mission Sunday.

 Healing of a child in California in 2001 certified as beatification miracle

Last Tuesday, May 6, Vatican Insider  reported that the cardinals and bishops of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints had voted unanimously to approve the miracle attributed to the intercession of Pope Paul VI. In 2001 a woman in California was expecting a baby, and her doctors predicted that the unborn child had such serious problems that it would either die in the womb or be born with severe kidney trouble.  The mother refused an abortion.  A nun who was a friend of the family urged her to pray to the late Pope, and the child was born safely in his 39th week.  The child, who has not been named, is now 13 and in good health. Read the details of the healing in Vatican Insider.

The bond between Pope Paul VI and St. Therese of Lisieux

 "I was born to the Church the day Saint Therese was born to heaven"

Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini was born on September 26, 1897 in Lombardy.  He was baptized on September 30, 1897, the day St. Therese died.  Later, when he became Pope, he received the ad limina visit of the bishop of Seez, the diocese where Therese was born, and said:

I was born to the Church on the day on which the Saint was born to heaven. That tells you just how special the links tying me to her are. My mother acquainted me with Saint Teresa of the Child Jesus whom she loved. I’ve read the Histoire d’une âme several times, the first time in my youth."1

When he received the distinguished French author Jean Guitton, Pope Paul VI said to him:

"You know that I was baptized in 1897, on the day when Thérèse Martin, later Thérèse of the Child Jesus, passed away in France. On one of the secret notes she made before her death (cf. Last Conversations), Thérèse said: `When I am dead, I shall visit the cradles of baptized infants'. On pilgrimage in Rome, she had encountered some mediocre priests; instead of criticizing them and retreating to the periphery, she resolved to place herself at the very heart of things, in love alone. I shall read you what she said about this in the `Story of a Soul"'. Taking the book, the Pope read out the famous passage: "I understood that Love comprised all vocations, that Love was everything, that it embraced all times and places. I cried out: I have found my place in the Church. My vocation is love."
(Reported by Jean Guitton, who adds: "Paul VI did not read me the French text, but the Latin translation in the breviary.")2

In his speech at a concert marking the centenary of the birth of Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul II recalled this coincidence of dates:

In mentioning Concesio, the birthplace of Giovanni Battista Montini, I naturally think of his family home and the baptismal font where he received the sacrament of new birth on the very day that — how can we fail to remember it? — the soul of St Thérèse of Lisieux departed this world. We can certainly link the spirituality of this Carmelite saint with the religious desire of Pope Paul VI, who expressed his great love for Christ through his long, wise service to the Church.3

1938: Pope Paul VI writes to the Lisieux Carmel about his lifelong devotion to St. Therese

As early as 1938, when he was "Substitute for Ordinary Affairs" under Cardinal Pacelli, who was then Vatican Secretary of State but later Pope Pius XII, the future Cardinal Montini wrote to the Carmel of Lisieux that he "had been following 'for a long time and with the liveliest interest the development of the Carmel convent of Lisieux.' And added that he had 'great devotion to Saint Teresa, a little relic of whom I keep on my work table.'"4

 1970: Pope Paul VI opened the way for St. Therese to be Declared a Doctor of the Church

 As we know, it was Pope John Paul II who, on October 19, 1997, declared St. Therese a Doctor of the Church.  But this could never have happened had not Pope Paul VI named the first two women, Catherine of Siena and Teresa of Avila, Doctors of the Church on September 27, 1970.  In fact, the demand among the people and the bishops for Therese to be named a doctor began at her canonization in 1925, but, because she was a woman, the Vatican ordered the gathering of the signatures of the world's bishops stopped in the 1930s.  In "Therese: A Doctor of the Third Millennium," their circular letter to the Carmelite family when Therese's doctorate was announced, the general superiors of the two branches of the Carmelite Order, Father Camillo Maccise, O.C.D., and Father Joseph Chalmers, O. Carm. give the history:

I. A LONG ROAD TOWARDS THE DOCTORATE

First Steps

4. Already from the time of her canonization, there was no lack of bishops, preachers, theologians, and faithful from different countries who sought to have our sister Thérèse of Lisieux declared a Doctor of the Church. This flow of petitions in favor of the doctorate became official in 1932 on the occasion of the inauguration of the crypt of the Basilica at Lisieux, which was accompanied by a congress at which five cardinals, fifty bishops, and a great number of faithful participated. On June 30, Fr. Gustave Desbuquois, SJ, with clear and precise theological argument, spoke of Thérèse of Lisieux as Doctor of the Church. Surprisingly, his proposal had the support of many of the participants, bishops, and theologians. This positive reaction to the suggestion of Fr. Desbuquois spread universally. Mons. Clouthier, Bishop of Trois Rivières, Canada, wrote to all the bishops of the world in order to prepare a petition to the Holy See. By 1933 he had already received 342 positive replies from bishops who supported the proposal to have Thérèse of Lisieux declared a Doctor of the Church.

The Obstacle of Being a Woman

5 The petition of Fr. Desbuquois was presented to Pope Pius XI, along with a letter of Mother Agnes of Jesus, sister of Therese and prioress of the Lisieux Carmel. She informed the Pope about the great success of the Theresian Congress. On 31 August 1932, Cardinal Pacelli, Secretary of State, replied to Mother Agnes' letter on behalf of the Pope. He was very pleased about the positive results of the congress, but added that it would be better not to speak of Thérèse's doctorate yet, even though, "Her doctrine never ceased to be for him a sure light for souls searching to know the spirit of the Gospel."

However, the time was not yet ripe for a woman to be declared a Doctor of the Church. In fact, Pope Pius XI had already replied negatively to the Carmelites' petition to have St. Teresa of Jesus, "Mother of Spiritual People" declared doctor. The petition was turned down because she was a woman. "Obstat sexus" ("Her sex stands in the way"), the Pope replied, adding that he would leave the decision to his successor. After the Vatican's negative response, and by its order, the gathering of signatures in favor of Thérèse of Lisieux's doctorate was interrupted.

Circumstances Change

6. Teresa of Jesus and Catherine of Siena's declaration as Doctors of the Church in 1970 eliminated completely any obstacle to naming a woman doctor. As a result, the proposal for the doctorate of Thérèse of Lisieux was taken up again.

In 1973, the centenary of her birth, Mgr. Garrone stated the question anew: "Could St. Thérèse of Lisieux become some day a Doctor of the Church? I respond affirmatively, without hesitation, encouraged by what has happened to the great St. Teresa and St. Catherine of Siena."

 It was Pope Paul VI who not only gave the Church Catherine of Siena and Teresa of Avila as Doctor of the Church but also removed the "obstacle" of St. Therese's gender, which had stalled her movement to the Doctorate for nearly forty years.  How much we owe him.

1971: Thoughts pf Pope Paul VI about St. Therese's Spirituality

In a general audience on December 29, 1971, Pope Paul called Therese

she who taught in our day the spirit of childhood.  Spiritual childhood is one of the liveliest religious currents of our time.  It has nothing immature or affected about it.  Expressed in simple and innocent language, it is certainly derived from the paradoxical but always divine saying of Jesus: "Unless you become like little children, you cannot enter the reign of God."  (Mt 18:3).  . . . The basis of this evangelical spirituality could not be more authoritative.  It unfolds according to a humility not only moral but also theological and metaphysical, if I may say so: the humility of the Virgin Mary (Luke 1:38, 48), the humility of the wise, who have a sense of the transcendence of God and of the absolute dependence of the creature on the Creator; a humility all the more justified when the creature is something, because all depends on God, and the confrontation between our every limitation and the Infinite obliges us to bow our heads.  And humility, in this spiritual school, unites with confidence, because of how many signs God has given us of His goodness and His love.  If He wants to be called Father, our spirits must be filled with the filial spirit, and with a filial spirit, a childlike spirit full of faith and abandonment. This is the spiritual childhoood, which, at the school of the tradition of the Church, St. Therese of the Child Jesus sums up:  "It's the way of confidence, of complete abandonment."5 

June 9, 1964:  Paul VI and the Sacred Congregation for the Causes of Saints approved the writings of the Servants of God, Louis and Zelie Martin.

1971: Paul VI unites the two causes for sainthood of Louis and Zelie Martin

The cause for Louis Martin was opened in the diocese of Bayeux on March 22, 1957.  The cause for Zelie Guerin Martin was opened in the diocese of Sees on October 10, 1957.  Their last surviving daughter, Celine (Sister Genevieve of the Holy Face) had the joy of testifying about them before she died in 1959.  In 1971, for the first time in the history of the Church, Paul VI, finding that they became holy as spouses, ordered that the two causes be united into one single cause.  He laid the foundation for their being beatified together in 2008.6  (An Italian couple, Blessed Luigi Beltrame Quattrocchi and Blessed Maria Corsini, were beatified in 2001.  Their cause, however, was introduced only in 1994, long after Paul VI united the causes of Louis and Zelie).

1973: Paul VI offers St. Therese of Lisieux as a teacher of prayer and hope

In 1973, on the occasion of the centenary of Therese's birth, Pope Paul VI wrote a letter to Jean-Marie-Clement-Badre, then bishop of Bayeux and Lisieux, and "offered her as a teacher of prayer and theological virtue of hope, and a model of communion with the Church, calling the attention of teachers, educators, pastors and theologians themselves to the study of her doctrine."7  

 Pope Paul VI opened the way for St. Therese to be recognized as a Doctor of the Church and for Louis and Zelie Martin to be declared a blessed couple.  How fitting that he will be declared blessed on the same date, October 19, and the same liturgical feast, Mission Sunday, on which Therese was named a Doctor of the Church and on which Louis and Zelie were declared blessed.

Copyright Maureen O'Riordan 2014.  All rights reserved.  If you want to make use of this story, please apply to me for written permission.

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1"The Popes and Little Teresa of the Child Jesus," by Giovanni Ricciardi, in the May 2003 issue of 30 Days in the Church and in the World. 

2"Popes" at "St. Therese of Lisieux, The Little Flower"

3"Address of His Holiness Pope John Paul II at a Concert Marking the Anniversary of the Birth of Pope Paul VI."

4"The Popes and Little Teresa of the Child Jesus,", Ricciardi, op. cit.

5 General Audience of Pope Paul VI, December 29, 1971

6Biographical Profile of the Venerable Servants of God Louis Martin and Zelie Martin.

7Quoted in the "Saint Therese Calendar 2014" published by the St. Therese National Office in Dublin, Ireland.

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