Thérèse Martin and her parents, Louis and Zélie, canonized, ” is already exceptional,” confers Bishop Jean-Claude Boulanger, bishop of the diocese of Bayeux-Lisieux. But a fourth member of the Martin family has already taken the long road that leads to canonization. The trial of the cause of beatification of Léonie Martin was opened on July 2, 2015, in the crypt of the monastery of the Visitation in Caen. Since the canonical recognition a few months ago, the mortal remains of the sister of St. Therese of Lisieux have been subjected to extensive anatomical studies by several professors of medicine, some of them from the CHU of Caen. With an astonishing first observation, as Father Sangalli confides, “an incredible state of preservation, like mummified. ”
Born in Alençon in 1863, and who died in Caen in 1941, at the convent of Visitandines, Léonie Martin had a life that was not a long quiet river, far from it. Becoming a religious was not obvious. Several times the doors were closed to her. “And yet her holiness begins at her death,” confided Father Antonio Sangalli, postulator of the cause of the diocesan process, sent by Rome to study, in the smallest details, the life of the sister of St. Teresa. “Her holiness then spread throughout the world without much being done. ”
Letters from all over the world
This is evidenced by the letters that are no longer counted and crowd in front of the tomb of Léonie Martin in the crypt of the convent of the Rue de l’Abbatiale since it was opened in 1973.
“We receive letters from all over the world, mostly prayer intentions for children in difficulty,” says Sister Marie-Christine. At the Visitation since 1946, she knew the sisters of Therese, Agnes and Céline.
Like her parents and her sister Therese, “presumed” miracles, as Father Sangalli advances cautiously, would be attributed to Léonie Martin. There are three unexplained healings, children in Brazil, France, and Switzerland. But before attributing these presumed miracles to the sister of St. Teresa, the road is long.
Before being canonized as her parents and sister, Leonie Martin must first go through three stages, as Father Sangalli indicates: “venerability, blessed, with the study of a miracle, and the beatification before The canonization. ”
When Father Sangalli came to Caen for the first time in the crypt of the Visitandines where Léonie Martin was placed, he was “surprised by the number of letters placed before the tomb. ”
Suffering terribly from an eczema throughout her life, a disease that was not treated as it is now, “Leonie Martin is not a new Therese,” confesses the bishop of the diocese, “but a real Visitandine, while observing that there is “an osmosis in the spirituality of the Martins, an exceptional family. ”
Translated from the article in French written by F. Leterreux