THÉRÈSE MARTIN was born at Alençon, France on 2 January 1873. Two days later, she was baptized Marie Frances Thérèse at Notre Dame Church. Her parents were Louis Martin and Zélie Guérin (the only married couple ever canonized together). After the death of her mother on 28 August 1877, Thérèse and her family moved to Lisieux. She was one of nine children, and of the five daughters who lived to adulthood, all became nuns.
From an early age Thérèse wished to embrace the contemplative life, as her sisters Pauline and Marie had done before her in the Carmel of Lisieux, but she was prevented from doing so by her young age. On a visit to Italy, during an audience granted by Pope Leo XIII to the pilgrims from Lisieux on 20 November 1887, she asked the Holy Father with childlike audacity to be able to enter the Carmel at the age of fifteen. Her wish was granted.
In Carmel she embraced the way of perfection outlined by the Foundress, Saint Teresa of Jesus, fulfilling with genuine fervor and fidelity the various community responsibilities entrusted to her. Her faith was tested by the sickness of her beloved father, Louis Martin, who died on 29 July 1894. Thérèse nevertheless grew in sanctity, enlightened by the Word of God and inspired by the Gospel to place love at the center of everything.
On 9 June 1895, on the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, she offered herself as a sacrificial victim to the merciful Love of God. At this time, she wrote her first autobiographical manuscript, which she presented to Mother Agnes for her birthday on 21 January 1896.
Several months later, on 3 April, in the night between Holy Thursday and Good Friday, she suffered a haemoptysis, the first sign of the illness which would lead to her death; she welcomed this event as a mysterious visitation of the Divine Spouse.
Thérèse accepted her suffering with patience up to the moment of her death in the afternoon of 30 September 1897. “I am not dying; I am entering life.” Her final words, “My God…, I love you!”, seal a life which was extinguished on earth at the age of twenty-four; thus began, as was her desire, a new phase of apostolic presence on behalf of souls in the Communion of Saints, in order to shower a rain of roses upon the world.
Thérèse was canonized by Pope Pius XI on 17 May 1925. The same Pope proclaimed her Universal Patron of the Missions, alongside Saint Francis Xavier, on 14 December 1927. Pope John Paul II proclaimed Thérèse a Doctor of the Universal Church on World Mission Sunday, 19 October 1997.
(Summarized from her biography on Vatican.va)
