Shortly after her death in 1897, the remarkable story of a French Carmelite nun. Thérèse of Lisieux, began to spread like wildfire. Her autobiography, Story of a Soul, was an instant hit, and it wasn’t long before people began to seek her intercession.
Her canonization process was already opened in 1914 and reports of miracles began to flood in to the Vatican offices.
In particular, two miracles were verified that paved the way to her beatification in 1923, in the year she would have turned 50 years old.
According to the Society of the Little Flower, “in 1923 the Church approved of two spontaneous cures unexplained by medical treatment.
Sister Louise of St. Germain was cured of the stomach ulcers she had between 1913 and 1916.
The second cure involved Charles Anne, a 23-year-old seminarian who was dying from advanced pulmonary tuberculosis. The night he thought he was dying, Charles prayed to Thérèse. Afterward, the examining doctor testified, ‘The destroyed and ravaged lungs had been replaced by new lungs, carrying out their normal functions and about to revive the entire organism. A slight emaciation persists, which will disappear within a few days under a regularly assimilated diet.’”
Pius XI subsequently beatified Thérèse of Lisieux on April 29, 1923.
It only took two years to verify two more miracles that led to her canonization on May 17, 1925.
And today we celebrate...