Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, born Marie Françoise-Thérèse Martin, was a Roman Catholic French Carmelite nun widely venerated in modern times. She is popularly known as "The Little Flower". She has been a highly influential model of sanctity for Catholics and others because of the simplicity and practicality of her approach to the spiritual life. Thérèse felt an early call to religious life, and overcoming various obstacles, in 1888 at the early age of 15, she became a nun in the cloistered Carmelite community of Lisieux, Normandy. After nine years as a Carmelite religious, having fulfilled various offices such as sacristan and assistant to the novice mistress, and having spent her last eighteen months in Carmel in a night of faith, she died of tuberculosis at the age of 24. Her feast day is on October 1. Thérèse is well known throughout the world, with the Basilica of Lisieux being the second-largest place of pilgrimage in France after Lourdes.
