Shrine of Lisieux

The second pilgrimage of France after Lourdes

Lisieux is, after Lourdes, the greatest pilgrimage site in France.^[5] More than eight hundred thousand visitors and pilgrims come here each year, from all over the world, drawn not by a single shrine but by a cluster of Theresian places spread across the town: the basilica on the hill, the Carmel where Thérèse lived and where her relics rest, the childhood home of Les Buissonnets, Saint-Pierre Cathedral where she prayed, and the crypt that now houses her parents.^[6][7]

The contrast is striking between the modesty of the life at the origin of the shrine and the scale of the pilgrimage it gave rise to. Thérèse never left France, except for a pilgrimage to Rome; she held no public office, worked no marvel in her lifetime, and left only a schoolgirl's notebook written out of obedience. And yet, a century later, her name is one of the best known in Christendom, and the town where she died receives each year a crowd comparable to that of the greatest Marian shrines.

A shrine born of a hidden life

What makes Lisieux distinctive lies in the very nature of its saint. Thérèse received no public apparition, founded no order, evangelised no continent. She lived nine years behind the grille of a Carmel, in a deliberately ordinary monastic life that she wanted "hidden". Her originality is entirely interior: to have made the little way of trust and abandonment a path of holiness open to all, and to have offered her life for the salvation of souls and for the missions.

It is this hidden life which, in revealing itself after her death, made the shrine. Lisieux is therefore not the place of a spectacular supernatural event, but the place of a presence: that of a saint whose active intercession the faithful have experienced for more than a century. The pilgrim does not come to see where heaven opened, but where a soul offered itself — and from where, in her own words, she continues to "do good on earth".^[8]

Lisieux before Thérèse

Before becoming the "city of Saint Thérèse", Lisieux was an ancient episcopal city of the Pays d'Auge, endowed with a remarkable Gothic cathedral, Saint-Pierre, and a rich heritage of half-timbered houses. The Martin family settled there in 1877, coming from Alençon, after the death of the mother, Zélie. It was in this provincial market town, with no particular spiritual reputation, that the last of the Martin daughters would spend her childhood, enter the Carmel and die — making Lisieux, for the following century, a familiar name on every continent.^[9]

30 September 1897: a death at the Carmel

Thérèse died in the infirmary of the Carmel of Lisieux on 30 September 1897, at about seven in the evening, after eighteen months of tuberculosis and a long "night of faith".^[10][11] Nothing, that evening, foreshadowed a pilgrimage: a twenty-four-year-old Carmelite passed away in a provincial monastery, known only to her sisters and a few relatives. She was buried in the town cemetery, in an ordinary grave.

But Thérèse had left, at her prioress's command, autobiographical manuscripts. Before dying, she had confided to her sisters words of astonishing assurance about her future mission:

"I want to spend my Heaven doing good on earth." — Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, words of 17 July 1897, collected in the Last Conversations^[12]

Story of a Soul (1898) and worldwide spread

A year after her death, in 1898, the Carmel published her manuscripts under the title Story of a Soul, at first in a confidential printing destined for the Carmels. Success immediately exceeded all expectations: reprinted, translated, circulated by the tens of thousands, the book carried Thérèse's "little way" to the four corners of the world.^[13] The Carmel was submerged with mail; people told of graces, conversions, healings obtained by invoking the young Carmelite. The cemetery tomb became a place of visits, then of pilgrimage.

"After my death, I will let fall a shower of roses." — Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, words reported by her sisters (June 1897)^[14]

This "shower of roses" — the image of the graces she promised to pour out — became the watchword of the nascent pilgrimage: people awaited it, received it, testified to it. From 1907 the Carmel gathered these accounts in a series of volumes entitled Shower of Roses.^[15]

Beatification (1923) and canonisation (1925): "the star of my pontificate"

The momentum was such that the cause for sainthood advanced with exceptional speed. Thérèse was beatified on 29 April 1923, then canonised on 17 May 1925 by Pope Pius XI, barely twenty-eight years after her death.^[16] Pius XI, who felt a particular devotion to her, made her one of the figures of his pontificate and called her, in a formula that has remained famous, "the star of my pontificate".^[17] Two years later, in 1927, he proclaimed her patroness of the missions, on a par with Saint Francis Xavier — a staggering distinction for a nun who had never set foot on mission soil.^[18]

The canonisation of 1925 fixed the status of the shrine: Lisieux was no longer only the tomb of a beloved religious, but the pilgrimage place of a universal saint, whose way the Church proposes to all Christians. The stream of pilgrims, already considerable, became a river — and soon demanded the building of a great church.

A basilica for the crowds, financed by the whole world

The Carmel and the existing chapel could no longer hold the influx of pilgrims. It was therefore decided to raise, on the town's hill, a vast basilica dedicated to the new saint. The project was approved in 1927, and the foundation stone laid on 30 September 1929, the anniversary of Thérèse's death, by Cardinal Charost.^[19] The building was financed by gifts and subscriptions from all over the world: Thérèse's "roses" were turned into offerings from pilgrims on every continent, in the measure of her radiance.^[20][21]

Cordonnier father and son, the Romano-Byzantine style

The plans were entrusted to the architect Louis-Marie Cordonnier (1854-1940), then continued by his son Louis-Stanislas Cordonnier. They designed a building in the Romano-Byzantine style, in the lineage of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Montmartre, with a great central dome, a sumptuous interior decoration of marbles and mosaics, and Art Deco touches.^[22][23] The basilica of Lisieux thus ranks among the largest churches built in the 20th century, and one of the last great monumental basilica building sites in France.

The dimensions of the basilica

Designed for great gatherings, the basilica impresses by its scale. The table below gives its main measurements, as published by the shrine.

On days of great affluence, "3,000 pilgrims can take their place on the benches of the basilica", says the shrine.^[24] A few figures vary slightly from source to source — some raise the dome to 95 or 97 metres counting the lantern — but the shrine's official measurements are authoritative.^[25][26]

The blessing of 1937 and Cardinal Pacelli

On 11 July 1937, at the close of the eleventh National Eucharistic Congress, the still unfinished basilica was solemnly blessed by Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, papal legate — the future Pope Pius XII.^[27][28] His presence gave the event a national resonance: two days later, at Notre-Dame de Paris, the same legate delivered his famous address on the Christian vocation of France. The blessing of Lisieux thus inscribed the young basilica at the heart of the life of the Church in France on the eve of the war.

The consecration of 1954

After the building site was interrupted during the Second World War — Lisieux was heavily bombed in 1944 — the interior decoration was completed in the 1950s. The definitive consecration of the shrine took place on 11 July 1954, celebrated by Archbishop Martin of Rouen, Primate of Normandy, under the presidency of Cardinal Feltin, Archbishop of Paris.^[29][30] The basilica bears the title of minor basilica, a rank that seals its role as a great pilgrimage church of the Catholic Church.

The crypt and the mosaics

Beneath the great nave extends a vast crypt, completed and inaugurated as early as 1932, entirely lined with marbles and mosaics.^[31][32] The decoration of the basilica was completed, in 1958, with the laying of five great mosaics depicting the major stages of Thérèse's life; the stained glass and the designs were made in the workshops of the master glassmaker Pierre Gaudin (1908-1973).^[33] The crypt now houses the reliquary of Saints Louis and Zélie Martin, Thérèse's parents, making it a second centre of prayer within the basilica itself.

The campanile and the carillon

Beside the basilica stands a detached campanile, whose initial, very lofty design was reduced and completed later. It houses a carillon of 51 bells, including a powerful bourdon, which rings out over the town and accompanies the great celebrations of the shrine.^[34][35] The whole — basilica, dome, campanile — forms the silhouette every pilgrim sees on arriving at Lisieux, the visible sign of the "city of Saint Thérèse".

The monastery where Thérèse lived and died

If the basilica is the monument of the shrine, the Carmel is its heart. It was there that Thérèse entered on 9 April 1888, at fifteen, and spent the last nine years of her life; there that she wrote her manuscripts, lived her "little way", and died on 30 September 1897.^[36] The monastery, still inhabited by a community of Carmelites, is not a museum: the enclosure remains, and the inside of the convent stays closed to visitors. But its chapel has been, for more than a century, one of the most visited places in France.

The shrine, the recumbent statue and the Chapel of the Shrine

The chapel of the Carmel, built in the 19th century, was enlarged in 1923, the year of the beatification, to receive the relics of Thérèse and the influx of pilgrims.^[37] The relics of the saint have been kept there since that date. Most of her bones are enclosed in a richly adorned shrine, placed in the "Chapel of the Shrine"; above it, a statue depicting Thérèse lying on her deathbed — a wax recumbent figure into which some of her relics are set — offers pilgrims a striking image of the saint as she passed away.^[38]

It is before this shrine that the pilgrimage of the Carmel converges: people come to pray to the saint on the very spot where she lived, in the silence of a still living monastery. About one hundred and fifty thousand pilgrims visit the open areas of the Carmel each year.^[39] On the meaning of this veneration of relics, see Why Venerate Relics?.

The "Virgin of the Smile"

The chapel also keeps a relic of another kind: the statue of the Virgin known as the "Virgin of the Smile". It was this statue that stood in little Thérèse's bedroom when, gravely ill in 1883, she saw, in her own account, the Virgin smile at her and was at once healed. Placed near the shrine, it links the shrine to one of the founding episodes of Thérèse's interior life — detailed in Saint Thérèse of Lisieux.

The shrine of Lisieux is not a single monument, but a journey the pilgrim follows through the town, from the childhood home to the tomb. The table below gives an overview.

Les Buissonnets, the childhood home

Set apart from the centre, in the old "Village of the New World", Les Buissonnets is the house where the Martin family settled in 1877, after Zélie's death, to be near Uncle Isidore Guérin. Thérèse lived there from the age of four and a half until her entry into the Carmel in 1888.^[40] The house, kept as a Theresian museum, preserves the atmosphere and objects of the saint's childhood: her bedroom, the garden, family mementoes. It gives the Lisieux pilgrimage its biographical dimension: people venerate not only a distant saint, but visit the house where she grew up.

Saint-Pierre Cathedral

A jewel of Norman Gothic art, Saint-Pierre Cathedral was the parish of the Martin family. For more than ten years, Thérèse attended Mass there every Sunday, and often on weekdays, with her father and sisters; an altar was even erected there thanks to a gift from Louis Martin.^[41] It was on leaving a Mass at Saint-Pierre, in July 1887, that she locates the revelation of her vocation: to save souls through prayer and sacrifice. The cathedral remains a stage of the pilgrimage route, linking the modern shrine to the old heart of the town.

Louis and Zélie Martin, a couple of saints

The shrine of Lisieux is also that of a family. Thérèse's parents, Louis Martin (1823-1894) and Zélie Guérin (1831-1877), long regarded as a model of married holiness, were beatified in 2008, then canonised together on 18 October 2015 by Pope Francis — the first married couple canonised together as a couple.^[42] Their relics rest in the crypt of the basilica, making Lisieux a place of pilgrimage not only for a saint, but for the "Martin family of saints".

The shrine cannot be understood without the spiritual doctrine attached to it. Thérèse left no learned treatises, but a way: that of trust, abandonment and the "little" offered with love. Three traits form its heart, and give the Lisieux pilgrimage its own character.

The "little way" of trust and abandonment

The message of Thérèse, and therefore the spirit of the shrine, lies in the little way: holiness is not reserved for heroes of asceticism, but offered to the littlest who entrust themselves to God as a child to its father. That is what the Church recognised in making her a Doctor. This way, set out in detail in Saint Thérèse of Lisieux and in The Little Way of Saint Thérèse, explains why Lisieux draws so many ordinary pilgrims: they find there a saint who resembles them.

"I want to seek the means of going to Heaven by a little way, quite straight, quite short, a little way altogether new." — Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, Manuscript C^[43]

"I want to spend my Heaven doing good on earth"

The second pillar of the spirituality of the shrine is the posthumous mission Thérèse assigned to herself. Far from conceiving Heaven as rest, she announced it as an activity of charity prolonged towards the earth:

"I want to spend my Heaven doing good on earth until the end of the world." — Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, Last Conversations, 17 July 1897^[44]

These words are, more than any other, the key to the pilgrimage: people do not come to Lisieux only to honour one who is dead, they come to ask of one who is alive. The "thousands of miracles" attributed to her intercession — recorded from the first volumes of Shower of Roses — are received by pilgrims as the fulfilment of this promise.^[45] See The Thousands of Miracles of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux.

A missionary saint who never left her cloister

Lastly, Lisieux is the shrine of a paradoxical missionary vocation. Cloistered, Thérèse dreamed of carrying the Gospel to the whole earth; she offered her prayer and her suffering for missionaries and for sinners. It is this desire, more than any outward act, that earned her proclamation as patroness of the missions in 1927, alongside Saint Francis Xavier.^[46] The shrine prolongs this dimension today: Lisieux is not only a place of intimate devotion, but a centre of prayer for the evangelisation of the world.

A spiritual centre of the diocese of Bayeux-Lisieux

The shrine belongs to the diocese of Bayeux-Lisieux, which provides its pastoral animation. It welcomes more than eight hundred thousand visitors and pilgrims a year, making it, after Lourdes, the second pilgrimage of France.^[47][48] People come on diocesan pilgrimage, on retreat, on visits; Masses, times of adoration and confession are provided all year round, prolonging the "little way" into the concrete life of the faithful.

The worldwide journey of the relics (since 1994)

Faithful to Thérèse's promise to "do good on earth", the shrine has invented an unprecedented form of pilgrimage: the sending of her relics across the world. From 1994, in preparation for the centenary of her death, a reliquary containing some of the saint's bones began to travel — first through the French towns of her own pilgrimage to Rome, then through the great capitals of the five continents.^[49] Since then, the relics of Thérèse have been welcomed in more than sixty countries, by immense crowds, in cathedrals as in prisons — literally carrying Lisieux to the ends of the earth.^[50]

Doctor of the Church (1997) and patroness of France

The radiance of the shrine kept growing through the 20th century, as the Church deepened its grasp of the "little way". Pius XII made Thérèse a secondary patron saint of France on 3 May 1944, alongside Saint Joan of Arc.^[51] Above all, on 19 October 1997, John Paul II proclaimed her Doctor of the Church in the apostolic letter Divini Amoris Scientia — the youngest of the Doctors, and one of the few women to receive this title.^[52] Lisieux thus became, in a century, the shrine of an obscure Carmelite recognised as spiritual teacher of the universal Church.

Alongside Lourdes or Guadalupe, which prolong a Marian apparition, Lisieux remains a shrine of another kind: one where people venerate, not a sign come down from heaven, but the holiness of a hidden life — proof that a child offered to God can, in her own words, "do good on earth until the end of the world".^[53]

• Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897) — the complete biography of the saint: childhood, vocation, life at the Carmel, "little way" and canonisation.
• The Thousands of Miracles of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux — the record of the graces and healings attributed to her intercession.
• The Little Way of Saint Thérèse — the heart of her spiritual doctrine.
• Why Venerate Relics? — the meaning of venerating the shrine and the worldwide journey of the relics.
• The Shrine of Ars — another shrine born, not of an apparition, but of the holiness of a single life.
• Our Lady of Lourdes — the foremost pilgrimage site in France, contemporary with Thérèse.