List of devotees of St. Thérèse of Lisieux
Encyclopedia
Over the years, a number of prominent people have become devotees of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. These include:
- Pope John Paul IPope John Paul IJohn Paul I , born Albino Luciani, , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church and as Sovereign of Vatican City from 26 August 1978 until his death 33 days later. His reign is among the shortest in papal history, resulting in the most recent Year of Three Popes...
- "Dear little Thérèse , I was seventeen when I read your autobiography. It struck me forcibly...Once you had chosen the path of complete dedication to God, nothing could stop you: not illness, nor opposition from outside, nor the mists or inner darkness." - Mother TeresaMother TeresaMother Teresa , born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu , was a Roman Catholic nun of Albanian ethnicity and Indian citizenship, who founded the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, India, in 1950...
of Calcutta, originally called Agnes, explained her choice of the name Teresa as follows: "I chose Thérèse as my namesake because she did ordinary things with extraordinary love" - Maria ValtortaMaria ValtortaMaria Valtorta was a Roman Catholic Italian writer and poet, considered by many to be a mystic. Her work centers on Catholic Christian themes...
- Catholic mystic wrote: "The little flower has taught me that God is loved with rose petals - with small sacrifices made out of love." - Maria Candida of the EucharistMaria Candida of the EucharistBlessed Maria Candida of the Eucharist, O.C.D., was a Roman Catholic Carmelite nun, beatified by Pope John Paul II. The daughter of an appellate court judge, Pietro Barba, the family home was in Palermo, Sicily, but she was born in Catanzaro, Italy, during a brief assignment of her father to that...
- Was inspired by reading The Story of a SoulThe Story of a SoulThe Story of a Soul is the autobiography of Thérèse of Lisieux. It was first published on September 30, 1898, a year to the day after her death from tuberculosis at the age of 24, on September 30, 1897...
. - Edith PiafÉdith PiafÉdith Piaf , born Édith Giovanna Gassion, was a French singer and cultural icon who became widely regarded as France's greatest popular singer. Her singing reflected her life, with her specialty being ballads...
- French singer - "Shortly after her birth Edith developed a cataract. She was blind for almost three years. Her grandmother, Louise, took her to Lisieux. She saw. It was a real miracle for Edith. She always believed this. Since that time she had a real devotion to St Thérèse of the Child Jesus...she always had a small picture of the saint on her bedside table." (Simone Berteaut, Edith Piaf's closest friend). - Lucie Delarue-MardrusLucie Delarue-MardrusLucie Delarue-Mardrus was a French journalist, poet, novelist, sculptor, historian and designer...
- French writer - "the Carmelite-apparition..appeared, roses in hand, in the midst of an era which grieves and terrifies poets...Thérèse is my fellow-countrywoman, and almost my contemporary. I do not wish to let her glorious entry into sanctity pass by without honoring her in my own way. And besides, she is henceforth public property." (Introducing her book, 1926, on Thérèse). - Marc SangnierMarc SangnierMarc Sangnier was a French Roman Catholic thinker and politician, who in 1894 founded le Sillon , a liberal Catholic movement. He aimed to bring Catholicism into a greater conformity with French Republican ideals and to provide an alternative to anticlerical labour movements...
- Founder of Le SillonLe SillonLe Sillon was a French political and religious movement founded by Marc Sangnier which existed from 1894 to 1910...
- "May Thérèse from on high support us and show us how to be more one with Jesus." - Delia SmithDelia SmithDelia Smith CBE is an English cook and television presenter, known for teaching basic cookery skills. She is the UK's best-selling cookery author, with more than 21 million copies sold....
- British cookery writer - "Thérèse ..not only personified the first beatitude but is, I am deeply convinced, the supreme teacher in regard to the spiritual life." - Louise BrooksLouise BrooksMary Louise Brooks , generally known by her stage name Louise Brooks, was an American dancer, model, showgirl and silent film actress, noted for popularizing the bobbed haircut. Brooks is best known for her three feature roles including two G. W...
- American dancer and actress - "Her spiritual trek was guided by two New York City priests, whom she saw with increasing frequency in late 1952 and early 1953, and by a book about the life of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Storm of Glory by John Beevers. So enamored of Saint Thérèse was Louise that she spent one entire Sunday propped up in bed with her easel, fashioning a portrait in charcoal on canvas from a small photo of Thérèse at eight. It was the best and most haunting of her dozen works of art." - Alain MimounAlain MimounAlain Mimoun is a retired French runner and Olympic marathon champion.-Early life:Born in El Telagh, then in French Algeria, Mimoun lost several years of competition to World War II...
- Olympic marathon champion - "St Thérèse of Lisieux is my patron saint. The white roses which I planted in front of her [her statue in the garden] flower almost all the year round." - Henri BergsonHenri BergsonHenri-Louis Bergson was a major French philosopher, influential especially in the first half of the 20th century. Bergson convinced many thinkers that immediate experience and intuition are more significant than rationalism and science for understanding reality.He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize...
- Nobel prize winner - "One reason why the philosopher Henri Bergson esteemed Thérèse so highly was that he was fascinated by the qualities of character which prompted her to confront the Pope of her day , Leo XIII, in pursuit of her own desires...explicitly forbidden by the chaplain to address Leo XIII, Thérèse flouted the injunction..she was dragged away by two papal guards.This is hardly the simpering and docile saint which Thérèse's statuary too often suggests." - Claudia KollClaudia KollClaudia Koll is an Italian actress and missionary.-Biography:Claudia Koll was born in Rome of Italian and Romanian parentage....
- Italian actress - Don Luigi Orione - Italian saint
- Pio of Pietrelcina - Italian saint
- Charles MaurrasCharles MaurrasCharles-Marie-Photius Maurras was a French author, poet, and critic. He was a leader and principal thinker of Action Française, a political movement that was monarchist, anti-parliamentarist, and counter-revolutionary. Maurras' ideas greatly influenced National Catholicism and "nationalisme...
- French author and political philosopher - Jacques FeschJacques FeschJacques Fesch was the murderer of a French police officer, who became such a devout Roman Catholic while in prison awaiting execution that he has been proposed for canonization as a saint.-Early life:Fesch's father was a wealthy banker of Belgian origin, an artist and atheist, distant from his son...
- French murderer turned devotee - Ada NegriAda NegriAda Negri was an Italian poet and writer.-Biography:She was born in Lodi into an artisan family to Giuseppe Negri and his wife Vittoria Cornalba. She attended Lodi’s Normal School for Girls and earned an elementary teacher’s diploma...
- Italian poet - Giovanni PapiniGiovanni PapiniGiovanni Papini was an Italian journalist, essayist, literary critic, poet, and novelist.-Early life:...
- Italian critic and journalist - Giuseppe MoscatiGiuseppe MoscatiSaint Giuseppe Moscati was an Italian doctor, scientific researcher, and university professor noted both for his pioneering work in biochemistry and for his piety...
- Italian saint - Francis BourneFrancis BourneFrancis Alphonsus Bourne was an English prelate of the Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Westminster from 1903 until his death, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1911.-Early life:...
- British Cardinal - "I love St Therese of Lisieux very much because she has simplified things: in our relationship with God she has done away with the mathematics.." - Jean GuittonJean GuittonJean Guitton was a French Catholic philosopher and theologian.-Biography:Born in Saint-Étienne, Loire, he studied at the Lycée du Parc in Lyon and was accepted at the École normale supérieure in Paris. His principal religious and intellectual influence was from a blind priest, Francois Pouget...
- French writer - Emmanuel MounierEmmanuel MounierEmmanuel Mounier was a French philosopher.Mounier was the guiding spirit in the French Personalist movement, and founder and director of Esprit, the magazine which was the organ of the movement. Mounier, who was the child of peasants, was a brilliant scholar at the Sorbonne...
- French writer/philosopher - Gilbert CesbronGilbert CesbronGilbert Cesbron was a French novelist.Born in Paris, Cesbron attended what is now known as Lycée Condorcet. In 1944, he published his first novel, Les innocents de Paris , in Switzerland...
- Georges BernanosGeorges BernanosGeorges Bernanos was a French author, and a soldier in World War I. Of Roman Catholic and monarchist leanings, he was a violent adversary to bourgeois thought and to what he identified as defeatism leading to France's defeat in 1940.-Biography:Bernanos was born at Paris, into a family of...
- "A few months before her death, Therese wrote of ' a wall rising up as far as the heavens..when I sing of the happiness of Heaven, I feel no joy, because I am simply singing of what I WANT TO BELIEVE' (Manuscrits , 248)... Bernanos, a devotee of Therese, employs the same image in his novel Diary of a Country PriestDiary of a Country PriestDiary of a Country Priest is a 1951 French film directed by Robert Bresson, and starring Claude Laydu. It was closely based on the novel of the same name by Georges Bernanos. Published in 1937, the novel received the Grand prix du roman de l'Académie française...
, where the priest confides to his diary, Behind me there was nothing. and in front of me a wall, a black wall'. - Maxence Van Der MeerschMaxence Van Der MeerschMaxence Van der Meersch was a French Flemish writer, who was born on 4 May 1907 in Roubaix, and died on 14 January 1951 in Le Touquet, where he had gone to be treated for tuberculosis.-Life:...
- Henri GheonHenri GhéonHenri Ghéon , born Henri Vangeon in Bray-sur-Seine, Seine-et-Marne, was a French playwright, novelist, poet and critic. Brought up by a devout Roman Catholic mother, he lost his faith in his early teens, while still at the Lycée in Sens...
- Marie-Joseph LagrangeMarie-Joseph LagrangeMarie-Joseph Lagrange was a Catholic priest in the Dominican Order and founder of the École Biblique in Jerusalem...
- founder of Biblical School in Jerusalem - "I owe to Saint Thérèse the fact that I didn't become a bookworm. I owe her everything because without her, I would have shrivelled up, my mind dried up." - Marthe RobinMarthe RobinMarthe Robin was a French Roman Catholic mystic and reported stigmatist. She became bedridden when she was 21 years old, and remained so until her death. According to EWTN she reportedly ate nothing for many years except receiving Holy Eucharist.In 1928, she entered the Franciscan Third order...
- Daniel BrottierDaniel BrottierBlessed Daniel Jules Alexis Brottier, C.S.Sp. was a French Roman Catholic priest in the Congregation of the Holy Ghost. He was awarded the Croix de guerre and the Légion d'honneur for his services as a chaplain during World War I, did missionary work in Senegal, and administered an orphanage in...
- "In 1923, Father Brottier's superiors from the Congregation of the Holy SpiritHoly Ghost FathersThe Congregation of the Holy Spirit is a Roman Catholic congregation of priests, lay brothers, and since Vatican II, lay associates...
gave him the responsibility to resume [the] great Work of the Orphan-Apprentices of Auteuil. The former military chaplain already had great devotion to the little Carmelite. At the time of his appointment in AuteuilAuteuil-Neuilly-PassyAuteuil and Passy are part of the 16th arrondissement of Paris. They are located near the Bois de Boulogne and the suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine too....
ParisParisParis is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, he decided to build a chapel in honor of Thérèse who had just been beatified a few months earlier, so that the orphans could pray to their little mama in a sanctuary worthy of her." - Vita Sackville-WestVita Sackville-WestThe Hon Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Lady Nicolson, CH , best known as Vita Sackville-West, was an English author, poet and gardener. She won the Hawthornden Prize in 1927 and 1933...
, author of The Eagle and the Dove a study of Thérèse of Lisieux and Teresa of Avila - admired the "tough core of heroism" she found in the pages of Histoire d'une âme. - Gwen JohnGwen JohnGwendolen Mary John was a Welsh artist who worked in France for most of her career. She is noted for her still lifes and for her portraits, especially of anonymous female sitters...
- "Some of her final paintings were in fact of religious subjects [including] countless (over 700) tiny ink copies after a photograph of Thérèse of Lisieux and the saint's elder sister.."