St. Therese of Lisieux
Born at Alençon in 1873, Marie Françoise-Thérèse Martin was the last of the surviving daughters of her mother, Sainte Marie-Azélie (Zélie) Guertin, who died in 1877 when the child was 4. Her father moved the family to Lisieux in Normandy, to be near his wife's family; her eldest sister, Marie, then 17, and the next Pauline, then 16, took maternal care of her. In 1882, Pauline, who took the name of 'Mother Agnes of Jesus', entered the Carmelite convent in Lisieux, followed by Marie, who became 'Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart', in 1886. Her other sisters, Léonie (1863–1941), 'Sister Françoise-Thérèse', and Céline (1869-1959), 'Sister Geneviève of the Holy Face' also entered convents. In 1886, following nine years of illness and depression, she experienced her "complete conversion", and in 1888 she entered the Lisieux Carmel.
