The canonisation of Louis and Zelie Martin comes at the start of the final week of his bishops’ meeting on families, the Family Synod.
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Francis told those gathered in St. Peter’s Square that the couple, Louis and Zélie Martin, “practiced Christian service in the family, creating – day by day – an environment of faith and love”.
Her autobiography, “The Story of a Soul”, written as her health deteriorated, is a memoir of her troubled childhood and determination after the death of her mother when she was four to become a nun and dedicate her life to God.
Vatican City: The parents of French Saint Therese of Lisieux, dubbed “The Little Flower”, were raised to sainthood too on Sunday, in a move that Pope Francis hopes will underscore the importance of the family.
As an archbishop in Buenos Aires, he also had a picture of her on his desk.
It is for the first time in the history of the Catholic church that a married couple will together be proclaimed as saints.
The Holy Father’s aim is to provide a role model family that took the time and care to provide their children with an education in faith. All five became nuns, including the youngest, Therese, at 15.
Both miracles required for the canonisation concerned the inexplicable cures of newborns who had what doctors determined to be life-ending ailments. One involved Pietro Shiliro of Italy, born in 2002 with a congenital lung deformation. The priest who was called to baptize him encouraged his parents to pray to the Martin’s intercession.
But in order to be granted sainthood, the couple needed to have performed a miracle. She was born prematurely and suffered a brain haemorrhage, but her parents prayed for the Martins’ intercession and she survived.
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After three months in hospital, Carmen recovered and was released on January 2, 2009 – the 135th anniversary of the birth of Therese.
