The Thousands of Miracles of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (1897–present)

Two founding words of the summer of 1897

During the last months of her life, eaten away by tuberculosis, Thérèse announced to her sisters that she would not stop acting after her death. On 9 June 1897, as Marie, her elder sister, who had become in the Carmel Marie of the Sacred Heart, worried about losing her, Thérèse replied:

« Oh ! non, vous verrez, ce sera comme une pluie de roses. » — Thérèse of Lisieux, Carnet jaune, 9 June 1897, quoted by Camille Burette, Pluie de roses, Éditions de l'Emmanuel, 2023, p. 18^[6]

Marie would later connect this image to an account she had read about Saint Aloysius Gonzaga, and would testify at the ordinary process that Thérèse had told her: « Moi aussi […] après ma mort, je ferai pleuvoir des roses. » The expression, borrowed from this memory of her reading, came to designate collectively the whole body of graces thereafter attributed to the intercession of Thérèse.

A month later, on 17 July 1897, Thérèse herself set out the purpose of this posthumous activity — a text that would become one of the most quoted phrases of twentieth-century Catholic spirituality:

« Je sens surtout que ma mission va commencer, ma mission de faire aimer le bon Dieu comme je l'aime, de donner ma petite voie aux âmes. […] Oui, je veux passer mon Ciel à faire du bien sur la terre. » — Thérèse of Lisieux, Carnet jaune, 17 July 1897, quoted by Camille Burette, Pluie de roses, Éditions de l'Emmanuel, 2023, p. 18-19^[7]

This promise — mission, the gift of the "little way", posthumous activity — belongs to Thérèse's own spiritual doctrine, developed in particular in Manuscript C; it is set out in detail in the article devoted to her life and her spirituality. The present article focuses on what concretely followed this promise: the documented scale of the phenomenon it set off.

From a modest print run to a worldwide movement

Nothing in 1897 suggested a worldwide spread. Story of a Soul, Thérèse's autobiography composed of her three manuscripts, appeared in 1898 in a print run of 1,000 copies, sent in particular to the 121 Carmels of France and to 18 foreign Carmels.^[8] A second print run of 1,000 copies was immediately needed; a second edition appeared as early as May 1899. On the advice of Mgr de Teil, vice-postulator of the cause, Mother Agnès of Jesus — Thérèse's elder sister, who had become prioress — made a habit of systematically keeping the letters of graces received from all over the world. The 1907 edition of Story of a Soul already reproduces sixty-six of them.^[9]

The movement then accelerated very rapidly:

« En mars 1910 paraît sous le titre Pluie de roses un recueil de 82 pages recensant 167 miracles. » — Camille Burette, Pluie de roses, Éditions de l'Emmanuel, 2023, p. 21^[10]

Between 1913 and 1926, seven volumes of Pluie de roses were published by the Carmel — the fifth, published in 1920 after an interruption linked to the apostolic process, gathers in particular the graces reported during the First World War. The Carmel's publishing programme also included popular pamphlets, sheet music and 102 panels on glass or celluloid plates, intended for public screenings in parishes.^[11]

This acceleration, condensed into a single generation, can be seen at a glance in the following chronology:

More than 13,500 accounts, a category apart

The central figure of this dossier is given by the archivist herself:

« The Carmel of Lisieux holds in its archives more than 13,500 accounts of miracles, from 1899 to the present day. » — Camille Burette, Pluie de roses, Éditions de l'Emmanuel, 2023, p. 23^[21]

On the back cover — a presentation text by the publisher — a second count is put forward: « Among the fourteen thousand testimonies preserved at the Carmel of Lisieux ».^[22] Both counts thus appear in the same work published in 2023, without it explaining their discrepancy; the order of magnitude, more than thirteen thousand accounts in a little over a century, remains in either case without equivalent for a Carmelite who died unknown at twenty-four.

A point of method is decisive for understanding this figure: these are archived accounts, not thirteen thousand five hundred miracles canonically recognized by the Church. Burette herself uses, depending on the case, the words miracles, graces, favours or interventions — a caution in vocabulary that this article adopts as its own.

The typology of graces received

The Carmel's archivist has established a typology of this collection:

« The graces granted are very diverse. While healings account for more than half of them, one also finds conversions, spiritual graces, protection in dangers, help for success at school or at work, in family, friendly, social life, in psycho-affective life, material and financial help. » — Camille Burette, Pluie de roses, Éditions de l'Emmanuel, 2023, p. 23^[23]

To these categories are added phenomena reported more rarely: scents of roses or incense, apparitions of Thérèse and hearing of her voice — three manifestations attested on several occasions at the Carmel itself, developed further on in this article.

The table below sets out this typology and refers, for each category, to the most solidly documented case presented in this article:

One category attracts particular attention by its statistical weight: children.

« Miracles related to children account for 23% of the accounts of graces received at the Carmel. » — Camille Burette, Pluie de roses, Éditions de l'Emmanuel, 2023, p. 136^[24]

The collection of 13,500 accounts and the four miracles retained for the cause of Thérèse do not fall under the same regime of proof. To understand this difference, one can picture the canonical procedure as a full-fledged trial, where the alleged miracle plays the role of the evidence to be established: a medical file is compiled, experts examine it adversarially, a party charged with raising objections — historically called the "Promoter of the Faith", and familiarly nicknamed "the devil's advocate" — argues against the supernatural explanation, and defence advocates reply point by point. Only a file that withstands this adversarial examination is retained. The Church thus carefully distinguishes the collection of mere archived accounts from the cases submitted to this procedure:

« They are the subject of a "canonical procedure on the reality of miracles" during which several cases are studied by medical experts, by the Promoter of the Faith, who raises objections, and by defence advocates. At the time, two miracles are required for beatification, and two more for canonisation. » — Camille Burette, Pluie de roses, Éditions de l'Emmanuel, 2023, p. 22^[25]

This adversarial procedure — a medical examination followed by an argued debate, not a mere edifying observation — explains why, out of the thousands of accounts gathered, only four served as the legal basis for the official recognition of Thérèse's holiness. The rest of the collection documents a phenomenon of popular piety of real magnitude, but falls under a different regime of certainty: that of testimony gathered and preserved, not that of the legally established miracle.

This distinction structures this entire article, which in fact follows three levels of decreasing certainty. At the first level are the four canonical healings of the following section, subjected to the adversarial examination described above: a prior diagnosis, the absence of effective treatment, rapid and lasting healing, confirmation by several doctors and sometimes by successive X-rays. At the second level are dozens of named cases — healings, conversions, protections, material graces — documented by identified doctors, certificates or several direct witnesses, but never submitted to the adversarial procedure of a canonisation cause; they make up the bulk of the body of this article. At the third level, finally, are the thousands of letters preserved at the Carmel without medical documentation or identifiable outside witnesses: they make up the bulk of the 13,500 archive accounts, but this article cites them only for statistical purposes, without reproducing their individual detail — precisely because each case cannot be verified with the same rigour.

Each case presented in the following sections is therefore explicitly linked to one of these first two levels: the reader will always know whether they are reading the account of a miracle legally established by the Church, or that of a well-documented healing but one not canonically tried.

Two miracles formed the basis of Thérèse's beatification on 29 April 1923; two others, her canonization on 17 May 1925.^[26][27] In both cases, the procedure required a firmly established medical diagnosis before the novena, the absence of any effective treatment underway at the time of the healing, a rapid and complete healing, and its lasting permanence.

The four case files that follow set out, for each case, the diagnosis established before the novena, the chronology of the healing, and the medical finding that led to its acceptance.

Sister Louise of Saint-Germain — a Hemorrhagic Ulcer Disappears in a Few Hours

Marie-Renée Lauroa, in religion Sister Louise of Saint-Germain, a Daughter of the Cross at Ustaritz, has suffered since her novitiate (1911–1912) from a stomach ulcer extending to the duodenum, accompanied by hemorrhages, profound anemia, vomiting, and acute pain. The diagnosis becomes clear in May 1913; her condition deteriorates sharply on 28 May 1915, to the point that surgery is deemed impossible and the last sacraments are administered to her upon her return to Ustaritz.^[28]

After thirty-two days of near-total exhaustion, apparitions are reported to her on 1, 2, and 3 July 1915, followed by a further promise of healing on 10 September 1916. A major crisis occurs from 17 to 21 September; the nun falls asleep around 9 p.m. and wakes healed at 5:30 a.m. on 22 September 1916 — immediately taking up again foods she had been unable to tolerate for years, including bread, meat, coffee, and wine. The healing persists without relapse; seven years later, no X-ray shows any further trace of the ulcer.^[29]

The most valuable medical analysis of this case file is that of Dr. Le Bec:

“For these foods of the first day, as of the following days, to have been tolerated, the ulcer must have completely disappeared […] within a maximum of six to seven hours. Now, never in clinical practice has one seen things proceed with such speed. The healing of an ulcer is always accomplished with extreme slowness, generally requiring months.” — Dr. Le Bec, cited by Camille Burette, Pluie de roses, Éditions de l'Emmanuel, 2023, p. 56^[30]

This case was accepted by the Church on four converging criteria: an illness attested by consistent symptoms over several years, the absence of any effective treatment at the decisive moment, the medical impossibility of natural healing within so short a time, and the permanence of the healing confirmed by later X-rays and examinations.^[31]

Charles Anne — Galloping Consumption Halted in a Few Days

Charles Anne enters the seminary of the Diocese of Bayeux-Lisieux in October 1903, at nineteen years of age. A first bout of coughing up blood occurs in June 1905; the doctors La Néele (who had treated Thérèse during her final illness) and Loisnel diagnose a tuberculous cavity at the top of the right lung, tuberculous softening of the left lung, and severely damaged bronchi — a galloping form of pulmonary consumption. On 25 August 1906, numerous Koch bacilli are found in his sputum; from 27 to 31 August, a constant fever of 39 to 40 °C is accompanied by vomiting and delirium, to the point that the last sacraments are considered.^[32]

A first novena has no effect. A second, addressed this time solely to Thérèse, produces the opposite result:

“From the first days, he feels a great change in his condition. The breathlessness ceases, the fever disappears, appetite and strength return. On auscultation, the two doctors find that all the pulmonary lesions are healed and that the cavities have disappeared.” — Camille Burette, Pluie de roses, Éditions de l'Emmanuel, 2023, p. 59^[33]

Charles Anne is subsequently ordained a priest and becomes chaplain of the hospice of Lisieux. At the time of the beatification, in 1923, his healing had lasted nearly twenty years, without the slightest relapse.^[34] The circumstance that one of the two signing doctors, Dr. La Néele, had himself treated Thérèse during her own tuberculous agony a few years earlier lends this case file a particular continuity: the practitioner who had been unable to save the nun attests, less than a decade later, to the unexplained healing of a patient suffering from a pathology of the same nature.

Sister Gabrielle Trimusi — Tuberculous Spondylitis Erased in One Night

A Daughter of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary in Parma, Sister Gabrielle Trimusi suffers from February 1913 onward from chronic arthritis and then tuberculous synovitis of the left knee: plaster casts, iodine treatment, blistering plasters, and a spa cure all prove ineffective. Weakness in the legs and spinal pain are added to the clinical picture; an X-ray of 13 January 1922 reveals a spondylitis between the twelfth dorsal vertebra and the first lumbar vertebra. A plaster corset, then an iron corset, become necessary; radiotherapy of the knee remains without effect, while fever and wasting set in.^[35]

On 24 June 1923, at the end of a community novena, she is able to kneel without pain, then removes her corset. The mother superior reports the following medical finding:

“According to the radiological films, it was possible to establish the disappearance of the disc between the two vertebrae and of the deep erosion of the aforementioned vertebra of the spine, as well as the healing of the tuberculous synovitis in the patient's left knee.” — Mother superior of Sister Gabrielle Trimusi, cited by Camille Burette, Pluie de roses, Éditions de l'Emmanuel, 2023, p. 63^[36]

Three successive X-ray examinations quickly confirm this change, accepted as one of the two miracles of the 1925 canonization.^[37] This case file differs from the three other canonical healings in the nature of its proof: what is attested is not merely the disappearance of pain or the recovery of a function, but the disappearance of a bone lesion visible on the X-ray film, compared before and after the novena — a type of proof that radiology, then relatively recent, made possible for the first time in the history of canonization causes.

Maria Pellemans — an “Incurable” Intestinal Tuberculosis Healed in an Instant

A young Belgian of twenty-three who would later enter the Carmel of Ghent, Maria Pellemans develops pulmonary tuberculosis in October 1919, extending to the stomach and intestines. The tuberculous ulceration is declared incurable in February 1920; in July 1922, her food intake is reduced to a few sips of milk, interspersed with bloody vomiting, intestinal attacks, and fainting spells.^[38]

On pilgrimage in Lisieux in March 1923, she suffers a severe crisis in the chapel of the Carmel, then another crisis in the cemetery. The pain disappears on 22 March: she eats a full meal in a restaurant that very day — after three years of almost impossible feeding — and remains active all afternoon without fatigue. The healing persists; she enters the Carmel of Ghent shortly afterward.^[39] Her doctor notes:

“I do not understand; I find you completely changed. This cannot be explained naturally, for the stomach and intestines were incurable. Yes, if this transformation persists, one will be able to say that it is a miracle.” — Maria Pellemans's physician, quoted by Camille Burette, Pluie de roses, Éditions de l'Emmanuel, 2023, p. 65^[40]

This last case illustrates a trait common to the four canonical miracles: the healing never consists merely in the disappearance of an isolated symptom, but restores an entire bodily function at once — here, normal digestion, after three years in which ordinary food had become impossible — to the point of allowing, that very day, a full meal followed by sustained activity without fatigue.

Beyond the four canonical miracles, the Carmel's archives preserve hundreds of healings documented by named witnesses, sometimes by medical certificates, without having been submitted to the adversarial procedure described above. The reason is most often practical rather than doctrinal: a cause for canonisation can rely only on a limited number of files, chosen for their maximum evidentiary strength at the precise moment the Church needs them; the other healings, sometimes just as well attested, then remain in the archives without being formally investigated. Three cases stand out for the quality of their documentation.

Reine Fauquet — three ophthalmologists consulted in vain

The most solidly documented case in this secondary corpus concerns a little girl of four and a half, Reine Fauquet, suffering since 11 January 1906 from phlyctenular keratitis: eyelids glued shut, cornea clouded, sight deemed lost — the three ophthalmologists consulted even ask that the child not be brought back to them.^[41]

The account established by Camille Burette sets out the outcome:

« Une douzaine de témoins, parmi lesquelles trois religieuses de la Providence de Lisieux, la propriétaire de la famille et des commerçants lexoviens, confirment cette guérison miraculeuse. » — Camille Burette, Pluie de roses, Éditions de l'Emmanuel, 2023, p. 140^[42]

The day before, on 25 May 1908, Reine's mother went to Thérèse's grave and then asked the Carmel for a novena; the next day, 26 May, while her mother attends the six o'clock Mass, Reine — watched over by her sister Marie, aged nine — sees Thérèse at her bedside. Marie reports in her testimony that her sister said she had laughed "at the Little Thérèse by her bed", had "taken her by the hand", and had found her "beautiful", with "a veil" and "all lit up around her head".^[43]

Reine then announces to her mother, back from Mass:

« Maman, je n'en ai plus besoin, je vois aussi bien que toi à présent. » — Reine Fauquet, testimony reproduced by Camille Burette, Pluie de roses, Éditions de l'Emmanuel, 2023, p. 139^[44]

The child is then declared completely healed by the doctor, with no relapse observed thereafter.^[45] This file is remarkable, for a healing not canonically investigated, in bringing together at once a vision account described by a child witness (the beneficiary's sister), a medical finding of complete and lasting healing, and a dozen named witnesses by category.

Antoinette Hébert — a leg shortened by fifteen centimetres straightened in one night

After a pleurisy in July 1908, an infection spreads to Antoinette Hébert's leg. Three years later, she has lost sixteen kilos; her hip is swollen, her knee stiffened, her foot twisted, and her leg shortened by fourteen to fifteen centimetres through atrophy. A surgeon at the Hôtel-Dieu of Beauvais declares the case incurable; only morphine relieves the pain.^[46]

On the seventh day of a novena begun on 14 May 1912, she hears a voice, then loud cracking sounds in her leg, and walks from the following morning:

« La guérison est complète : le pied s'est redressé, les os de la hanche se sont remis en place, le genou a repris de sa souplesse et la jambe s'est allongée. » — Camille Burette, Pluie de roses, Éditions de l'Emmanuel, 2023, p. 70^[47]

This case is striking for the extent of the deformity corrected in a single night — a shortening of several centimetres, established over three years, erased between the bedtime and the rising of one and the same novena — even if, unlike the four canonical healings, no later radiological report is cited to confirm its long-term persistence.

Doctor Aguerre — a radiologist healed by his own relic

A radiologist for some twenty years by 1925, Doctor Aguerre develops radiation dermatitis of his left hand, an occupational exposure being the cause. The lesion on his index finger progresses into an ulcer of an epitheliomatous character; treatments fail for five years, to the point that amputation of the last phalanx is considered. At the end of March 1930, he touches with his sick finger the grille of Thérèse's shrine: pain and bleeding stop at once; the wound is healed from the next day and will never reopen.^[48]

This file is peculiar in that the beneficiary is himself a man of the art, familiar with radiological lesions and their usual clinical progression: it is a radiologist, not a lay patient, who judges his own healing incompatible with five years of documented therapeutic failure.

Between 1914 and 1918, the Carmel of Lisieux received an influx of testimonies from the front: protection in combat, healings of wounds, apparitions reported by soldiers, conversions and ex-votos, and a massive distribution of medals and images of Thérèse among the combatants.^[49] The fifth volume of Pluie de roses, published in 1920, brings together a large share of these accounts.^[50]

This military spread was far from anecdotal: it was what made Thérèse — still unknown to the general public at the time of her death in 1897 — known to an entire generation of mobilized Frenchmen, the soldiers passing on medals, holy pictures and copies of Story of a Soul in the trenches and, once peace returned, reporting to the Carmel accounts of protection attributed to this "little saint." It was largely the fame acquired during the war that explains the striking swiftness of her beatification process.

The best-documented case of this period concerns Roger Lefebvre, a soldier of the 224th Infantry Regiment. On 17 September 1914 at 4:30 p.m., he was hit by six shell fragments in the head, face, thigh, foot and neck. After invoking Thérèse, he states that he saw her lift him up by the arm; the bleeding and the pain ceased, allowing him to reach an aid post four hundred metres away.^[51]

"I wish that all who do not believe could have an apparition like that! […] It is enough to change your mind." — Roger Lefebvre, cited by Camille Burette, Pluie de roses, Éditions de l'Emmanuel, 2023, p. 31^[52]

Roger Lefebvre met Mother Agnès of Jesus on 15 July 1915 and remained in correspondence with the Carmel.^[53]

Camille Burette devotes an entire chapter of her work to this type of grace, bringing together Protestant readers, Orthodox readers and non-practising readers whose reading of Story of a Soul preceded a conversion or a return to religious practice, as well as several physical healings followed by a spiritual conversion.^[54] The best-documented case in this category, supported by two official depositions in the processes of Thérèse, is that of a Scottish minister.

Alexander-James Grant, Scottish Minister

A minister of the United Free Church of Scotland, born in 1854, Alexander-James Grant read Story of a Soul at Christmas 1909. The reading shook his rationalism and his prejudices against Marian devotion and the Eucharistic real presence:

"I found that I had come into my hands the work of a genius, of a theologian, as well as of a poet of the first rank. […] I then felt what a person would experience before whom the invisible world suddenly opened up." — Alexander-James Grant, cited by Camille Burette, Pluie de roses, Éditions de l'Emmanuel, 2023, p. 83^[55]

These lines are taken from Grant's testimony at the ordinary process, where he declares: "It is to the reading of the life of Sister Thérèse that I owe my conversion." His conversion, however, was not immediate: bedridden with influenza during his Christmas 1909 reading, he was not yet ready to give up his Protestant faith and first turned away from Catholicism and from Thérèse.^[56]

These lines are taken from Grant's testimony at the ordinary process, where he declares: "It is to the reading of the life of Sister Thérèse that I owe my conversion." His conversion, however, was not immediate: bedridden with influenza during his Christmas 1909 reading, he was not yet ready to give up his Protestant faith and first turned away from Catholicism and from Thérèse.^[57]

Estelle and Michel Pascal reconstruct this interior crisis at length — readings, the felt presence of Thérèse, the struggle against rationalism and doubt — in the form of dramatized dialogue scenes; this article retains only the facts corroborated by the depositions and by Burette.^[58]

Grant abjured Protestantism on 20 April 1911, losing his ministry and his lodging; unexpected help then reached him from Glasgow. He gave a deposition at the ordinary process of Thérèse on 8 August 1911, and then at the apostolic process on 31 May 1915 — one of the few conversion cases in this dossier supported by official depositions.^[59] Settled with his wife in Alençon on 3 June 1912, he became the custodian of Thérèse's birthplace, a post he held until his death on 19 July 1917.^[60]

This case of conversion belongs to a broader movement of Protestant and Orthodox readers touched by Story of a Soul; the article devoted to answers to Protestantism explores in greater depth the doctrinal questions raised by this type of conversion.

The Chesterfield Inlet Mission and the Inuit Baptisms

Thérèse, who had never left her Norman cloister, nevertheless said she harboured a burning desire for the missions; her prayer and offering for two missionary priests, her "spiritual brothers," occupy a central place in her final writings. It is this unfulfilled desire during her lifetime that the Carmel saw realized, after her death, through accounts of graces received in missions as far-flung as China, Madagascar, Malacca, Mongolia, Abyssinia, Cambodia, southern Africa or Canada.^[61] The best-documented case in this missionary category concerns the Canadian Arctic.

After about fifty years of Oblate presence in the Arctic Canada and only five or six baptisms, the mission of Chesterfield Inlet was threatened with closure. In 1916, Father Arsène Turquetil anonymously received a work on the life of Thérèse, accompanied by soil from her first grave.^[62]

Following the prayers of the missionaries, several Inuit came forward to Mass and accepted nine months of catechumenate; four families were baptized on 2 July 1917. This episode contributed to the movement that culminated, ten years later, in the proclamation of Thérèse as patroness of the missions, on equal terms with Saint Francis Xavier, on 14 December 1927.^[63] The article on the Catholic missions in America gives a broader account of this twentieth-century missionary expansion.

Healings are not, as we have seen, the only face of the "shower of roses." Camille Burette places her accounts of material graces in the line of a very concrete charity, the kind already practised by Thérèse's parents, Louis and Zélie Martin — canonised together by Pope Francis on 18 October 2015^[64] — towards the poor of Lisieux.^[65] The most circumstantially detailed case of material grace in the corpus concerns the Carmel of Gallipoli, in Apulia, southern Italy.

On 25 February 1910, Mother Carmela of the Sacred Heart, prioress of the Carmel of Gallipoli, writes to the Carmel of Lisieux — a letter preserved in the archives, the sole source of this episode — to report a series of apparitions in which money repeatedly appears in a locked box, enabling the community to pay off a debt:

"Here are 500 lires with which you will pay your community's debt." [...] "No, I am not our holy Mother, I am the Servant of God Sister Thérèse of Lisieux." — Mother Carmela of the Sacred Heart, letter of 25 February 1910, cited by Camille Burette, Pluie de roses, Éditions de l'Emmanuel, 2023, p. 169^[66]

Still according to these letters, the phenomenon repeats itself on several occasions, until a 100-lire note, lost by the local bishop, Mgr Müller, is found in the same locked box — a detail that, in the community's eyes, ruled out the hypothesis of a human hand.^[67] A replica of this type of grace is attested, two years later in 1912, at the orphanage of Brest, only by the direct testimony of the institution's bursar sister, who likewise reports unexplained financial assistance arriving at the moment of her greatest need.^[68]

These two accounts rest on the letters and unique testimonies preserved in the Carmel's archives: they have never been subjected to the adversarial procedure of a canonisation cause, and therefore do not stand on the same footing as the medically documented healings presented above. The Gallipoli file has, however, left traces other than these letters: according to the thereseoflisieux.org documentary file (based on John Beevers, Storm of Glory, p. 128, and Giovanni Ricciardi, "The Miracle of Gallipoli"), it was the subject of a special session of the diocesan process, and the historian Antoinette Guise Castelnuovo devoted a study to it in 2024 in the Revue d'histoire du XIXᵉ siècle.^[69] This case illustrates a category of graces less spectacular in its medical stakes than healings, but revealing of a very concrete piety: over the course of a century, the Carmel has gathered a great number of accounts of this kind — unexpected financial help, lost objects recovered, one-off material assistance — of which Gallipoli remains, by its scale and its double attestation two years apart, in Italy and then in France, the most circumstantially detailed case.

The Carmel's holdings are not limited to healings and conversions. They also preserve devotional practices born of the devotion to Thérèse, protections reported in extreme circumstances, and phenomena that occurred at the Carmel of Lisieux itself — among its own nuns, who had known Thérèse in her lifetime and who were therefore best placed to appreciate the continuity between the Carmelite they had rubbed shoulders with and the signs attributed, after her death, to her intercession.

Other protections, less developed than the two cases presented below but recorded by the Carmel, complete this picture: a medal of Thérèse said to have averted an accident with an industrial machine, an electrocution avoided, a raging ox subdued, a fire that occurred in Guayaquil in 1927.^[70] Generally reported by a single witness, without medical or judicial corroboration, these accounts illustrate less an evidentiary file than a widespread piety: the reflex, in the ordinary dangers of everyday life, of invoking the "little saint" of Lisieux.

Father Puntigam's rose novena

Among the devotional practices born of this body of graces, the so-called "rose" novena, begun on 3 December 1925 by the Jesuit Father Anton Puntigam — 24 Glory Be to the Father in honour of the Holy Trinity, with a request for a rose as a sign — is recommended by its author himself in the wake of the graces he says he received.^[71] Burette further reports, on the authority of the biographer Austen Ivereigh, that Pope Francis knows this novena and likewise asks for a rose as a sign that his prayer has been heard.^[72] Ivereigh's work having been unable to be consulted directly for the purposes of the present article, this link is retained as a second-hand quotation. Pope Francis's personal devotion to Thérèse and to the rose received as a sign is, on the other hand, attested by his own public words: "When I have a problem, I ask the saint not to solve it, but to take it into her hands and to help me accept it, and, as a sign, I almost always receive a white rose" (interview with Sergio Rubin, 2010; translation of the article).^[73]

The escape of Théodore Hennequin (January 1945)

The most dramatic case in this dossier of protections concerns Théodore Hennequin, arrested on 3 October 1944, deported to Dachau and then to Auschwitz-Jaworzno. During the evacuation of the camp on 17 January 1945 — one of those death marches where exhausted prisoners were shot at the slightest sign of weakness — he managed to escape on 20 January. No deportation archive having been able to be cross-checked for the purposes of the present article, the figures that follow are reported as the account preserved at the Carmel — the sole source of this episode — gives them:

"Of the 4,000 prisoners who set out, only seven survived, Théodore among them." — Camille Burette, Pluie de roses, Éditions de l'Emmanuel, 2023, p. 202^[74]

Still according to this sole account, his brother, at first reluctant and then convinced, ultimately does not follow him at the decisive moment; he perishes with the rest of the column in the general massacre that occurred two and a half kilometres further on.^[75]

The phenomenon of mystical odours

A recurring phenomenon, documented among several Carmelites with precise counts, concerns fragrances perceived at the Carmel of Lisieux on the occasion of manifestations attributed to Thérèse. During the exhumation of her body, on 6 September 1910, one episode is particularly controlled:

"Mother Agnès smells nothing; the novice, for her part, recognises the smell of incense [...] This fragrance is, however, perceived by no other sister when the board is shown to the community [...] Warned of the phenomenon, the sisters then smell only the damp and the mould." — Camille Burette, Pluie de roses, Éditions de l'Emmanuel, 2023, p. 220^[76]

The tally given by Burette specifies the frequency of these perceptions by religious: Mother Agnès of Jesus, about ten times; Sister Geneviève (Céline, Thérèse's sister), about fifteen times; Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart, four to five times.^[77] The coffin board that was the subject of this olfactory test was authenticated by Dr La Néele — the same doctor already mentioned in connection with the healing of Charles Anne — husband of Thérèse's cousin and present at the exhumation of 6 September 1910 as an expert.^[78]

The interest of this episode lies precisely in its protocol: the nuns are not warned beforehand of what they are to look for, each reports a different perception depending on when she approaches the board, and a blind test — sisters warned of the phenomenon and then invited to smell again — reveals only the damp and mould expected of a coffin that had lain thirteen years in the ground. This contrast between spontaneous perception and perception on instruction is what led the Carmel to record the episode with a wealth of detail unusual for a phenomenon of this kind.

The two healings of Father Pichon

Father Pichon, the Jesuit who was one of Thérèse's confessors, himself experiences two healings attributed to her intercession, on 2 January and 28 August 1909. His doctor, at first perplexed and then convinced, declares:

"On the second day the doctor said to me: 'I don't understand it at all, there is a hidden saint underneath.' 'No, there is a hidden saintess.'" [...] "I am quite innocent in the matter, you have baffled all our pathological notions; medically, as far as we were concerned, you were dead." — Doctor of Father Pichon, quoted by Camille Burette, Pluie de roses, Éditions de l'Emmanuel, 2023, p. 228-229^[79]

Sister Marie de la Trinité and the retained rosary

A more discreet episode, but often recounted, took place on the very day after Thérèse's death, during the exposition of her body. Sister Marie de la Trinité states that she was unable, for several minutes, to remove a rosary placed between the fingers of the deceased — a fact reported in her direct testimony, reproduced by Camille Burette in her chapter devoted to the life of the Carmel.^[80] The nun reports there the inner exchange accompanying the scene:

"As long as you do not give me a smile, I will not give it back to you." [...] "No, I am too sad, I would rather cry." — Sister Marie de la Trinité, testimony reproduced by Camille Burette, Pluie de roses, Éditions de l'Emmanuel, 2023, p. 213^[81]

The object is said to have only allowed itself to be taken back once the nun agreed to smile — an episode received by the Carmel as a first sign, discreet and non-medical, of the promise made a few months earlier.

Accounts relating to children make up, as we have seen, nearly a quarter of the Carmel's archives — a proportion explained in part by the way Thérèse herself spoke of her "little way" as a path of spiritual childhood, and by the importance that 20th-century Catholic families placed on the intercession of the saints for their sick children.^[82] Two cases illustrate the chronological diversity of this category, from the dawn of the 20th century to contemporary times.

Reine Fauquet, already presented above for her eye healing of 1908, belongs to this first generation of childhood graces: her healing remains, with its medical examination and her dozen witnesses, one of the best-documented children's cases in the entire corpus.^[83]

Josua Catafio (2018): a contemporary case

More than a century after the first accounts, the archive continues to grow. In November 2018, during the translation of Thérèse's relics in Iceland, a Colombian teenager, Josua Catafio, obtained the healing of his knee after praying before them. According to the report given by Burette drawing on Ouest-France — Anne Blanchard-Laize, "Guéri après des prières à sainte Thérèse, cet ado colombien vient remercier à Lisieux", 27 May 2019 —, the teenager says he is overjoyed and stresses above all that he can play football again.^[84]

This case, reported by the contemporary press according to Burette, illustrates the continuity of the phenomenon right up to our own day — more than a century after Thérèse's death, the "shower of roses" has not ceased.

An account widely taken up in popular culture deserves more cautious treatment than the preceding cases. According to this account, the young Édith Gassion, the future Édith Piaf, suffered around 1919 from bilateral phlyctenular keratitis — the same condition as Reine Fauquet — diagnosed by Doctor Degrenne. Her grandmother and the women of the brothel in Bernay where she was then growing up take her to Thérèse's grave on 19 August 1921:

"I said to her: Give me back my eyes, I long to see you." — Words attributed to Édith Gassion, quoted by Camille Burette, Pluie de roses, Éditions de l'Emmanuel, 2023, p. 143^[85]

The precise wording is reported via Jacqueline Cartier and Hugues Vassal, Édith et Thérèse. La sainte et la pécheresse (Éditions Anne Carrière, 1999), p. 31.^[86]

According to this account, she recovers her sight on 25 August and would keep a devotion to Thérèse throughout her life. Three reservations must however be made, which Camille Burette herself notes: the ophthalmological treatment prescribed continued during the novena; the story rests on a work published in 1999, some eighty years after the events; no medical record from the period is reproduced in support.^[87] This case may legitimately illustrate the cultural legacy of the "shower of roses" in 20th-century France, but it cannot be placed on the same level as the healings documented by medical certificates and named witnesses presented above.

The two works on which this article draws do not proceed from the same method, and the reader benefits from knowing so before closing this dossier. Camille Burette, archivist of the Carmel, works directly on the documents preserved at Lisieux — letters, medical certificates, official reports — and cites the documents with their dates and page numbers. It is on this basis that the four canonical healings and most of the named cases presented in this article rest.

Estelle and Michel Pascal, in Les miracles de sainte Thérèse, published in 2003, claim a different approach, which they set out themselves from their preface:

« Nous nous sommes contentés de les rendre vivantes, de les faire revivre, de charpenter les personnages, les situations. » — Estelle et Michel Pascal, Les miracles de sainte Thérèse, Éditions du Rocher, 2003, p. 15^[88]

The authors state that their ten accounts are based on cases submitted to the canonical inquiry into Thérèse — a lineage that is their own assertion, set out in the book's very subtitle, whose existence and exact wording have been verified, but which has not been independently cross-checked for the purposes of this article. Their particular interest lies in the fact that their reconstructions dovetail with, without contradicting, the dossiers already established by Camille Burette. This article has therefore used them as a narrative and biographical complement, distinct from the medical reports properly so called, which remain the preserve of Burette's archival work: no dialogue reconstructed by Pascal is quoted here as verbatim speech, except where he reproduces a document also cited by Burette.

One final feature deserves to be highlighted before concluding: the geographical spread of the cases presented in this article. A Basque nun healed of an ulcer at Ustaritz, a Belgian tubercular little girl healed on pilgrimage to Lisieux, a Carmel in Apulia relieved by a box that fills with money, a Scottish pastor converted after a reading, a Canadian Arctic mission saved by four baptisms, a French deportee who escaped a death march in Poland, a Colombian teenager healed before passing relics in Iceland: the following table places geographically some of the best-documented cases in this dossier.

This spread — at least five countries, three continents, more than a century — is itself a piece of evidence in the dossier: it confirms that the "shower of roses" did not remain a regional phenomenon peculiar to Normandy, but spread in proportion to the promise Thérèse made in 1897.

More than a century after the death of Thérèse Martin, the archives of the Carmel of Lisieux continue to grow each year with new accounts.^[89] This dossier is in no way uniform: four healings have been examined according to the most rigorous adversarial procedure the Church reserves for its causes of canonization; several dozen other cases are documented by named doctors, certificates and identifiable witnesses; thousands of letters, finally, remain testimonies of piety preserved without having been subjected to individual examination.

This hierarchy of certainty does not weaken the phenomenon: on the contrary, it makes it an object of serious study rather than a diffuse legend. What the four canonical miracles, the dozens of named healings and the thousands of letters of thanksgiving each document, at their own level, is the consistency of the same pattern over more than a century: an illness or trial with no human way out, a novena addressed to a Carmelite nun who died at twenty-four, and an outcome that the doctors themselves — Le Bec, La Néele, Loisnel, Aguerre — judged, each in his own vocabulary, beyond the reach of the medicine of their time.

The common thread running through this entire dossier, from the four canonical miracles to the most humble letters of thanksgiving, is fidelity to the promise Thérèse herself made a few weeks before her death: « Je veux passer mon Ciel à faire du bien sur la terre. »^[90] For the Catholics who come each year on pilgrimage to the sanctuary of Lisieux, this promise kept remains the best explanation of what Camille Burette calls, in the very title of her book, a "shower of roses" — a shower that, more than a century after it began, has still not stopped falling.

• Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897) — complete biography, spirituality of the "little way" and the doctrine of spiritual childhood.
• The Sanctuary of Lisieux — the basilica, the Carmel and the shrine where Thérèse's relics are venerated.
• Answers to Protestantism — to explore conversions such as that of the pastor Alexander-James Grant.
• Catholic missions in America — the missionary context of the Chesterfield Inlet mission.