Saints Louis and Zélie Martin

Louis Martin was born in Bordeaux on August 22, 1823. As a young man he asked to enter the monastery of the Great Saint Bernard, in the Alps, and was refused because he could not master Latin. He trained as a watchmaker in Rennes and Strasbourg and settled in Alençon. Zélie Guérin was born on December 23, 1831, at Gandelain, near Saint-Denis-sur-Sarthon in the Orne. The Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul turned her away because of her poor health, and she learned to make Alençon lace, the point d’Alençon, and built up a successful business of her own.

They met on the Pont Saint-Léonard in Alençon. Their civil marriage took place on July 12, 1858, and they were married in the church of Notre-Dame two hours later, in the night of July 13. They had nine children. Four died young: Marie-Hélène, Joseph-Louis, Joseph-Jean-Baptiste and Marie-Mélanie-Thérèse. The five daughters who lived, Marie, Pauline, Léonie, Céline and Thérèse, all entered religious life, Léonie in the Visitation and the four others in the Carmel of Lisieux. In 1870 Louis sold his watchmaking business to help with Zélie’s lace workshop, which employed about twenty workers, and in 1871 the family moved to the house on the rue Saint-Blaise where Thérèse was born on January 2, 1873.

Zélie died of breast cancer in Alençon on August 28, 1877, at forty-five. In November Louis moved with his five daughters to Lisieux, where Zélie’s brother Isidore Guérin lived, and settled at Les Buissonnets. In 1889 two strokes and cerebral arteriosclerosis led to three years at the Bon Sauveur asylum in Caen. He came back to Lisieux in 1892 and died on July 29, 1894, at the Château de la Musse, near Évreux.

Further reading: Lisieux: A Pilgrim’s Guide to the Town of Saint Thérèse.

Saint John Paul II declared them Venerable on March 26, 1994. After the cure of Pietro Schilirò, an Italian child with a grave lung disease, they were beatified in the basilica of Lisieux on October 19, 2008, by Cardinal José Saraiva Martins, legate of Pope Benedict XVI. After the cure of Carmen, a girl born in Valencia, Pope Francis canonized them in Saint Peter’s Square on October 18, 2015, during the synod on the family; they were the first married couple canonized together. Their feast on July 12 recalls the day of their civil marriage.

Their remains are kept in a reliquary in the Martin family chapel, next to the crypt of the basilica of Saint Thérèse at Lisieux. On July 12, 2025, for the tenth anniversary of their canonization, Cardinal François-Xavier Bustillo installed in the basilica of Notre-Dame in Alençon a second reliquary, a copy of the one in Lisieux, holding relics of their forearms. The sanctuary of Alençon, opened on the day of their canonization, receives about 2,000 prayer intentions a month, many of them from Brazil.

The couple are most often honored through the places and objects of their daily life. At Alençon the new reliquary stands in the marriage chapel behind the choir of the basilica, and the work carried out for it in 2025 was designed around the theme of lace, in memory of Zélie’s trade. The birth house of Thérèse, run by the sanctuary, has a museum, the bedroom of the Martins and a space devoted to watchmaking, Louis’s first trade.

• Alençon, Basilica of Notre-DameThe church of their wedding, where a reliquary with relics of their forearms has been kept in the marriage chapel since July 12, 2025.
• Alençon, rue Saint-BlaiseThe family home from 1871 to 1877, where Thérèse was born, now part of the sanctuary of Louis and Zélie, with a museum.
• Lisieux, Martin family chapelThe chapel next to the crypt of the basilica of Saint Thérèse, where their reliquary is kept; admission is free.
• Lisieux, Les BuissonnetsThe house where Louis lived with his daughters from November 1877.

On our ways: Lisieux, Alençon.

• Via RosarumThe Way of Roses, five daysDay I, Paris
  Day II, Paris to Alençon
  Day III, Alençon to Lisieux, by Bayeux