Venerable Léonie Martin

Léonie Martin, also known as Sister Françoise-Thérèse, VHM (3 June 1863 – 17 June 1941) was a French Catholic nun who led a cloistered life as a member of the Visitation Sisters. She was the daughter of Saints Louis Martin and Marie-Azélie Guérin Martin and an elder sister of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. She is sometimes dubbed Saint Thérèse's "difficult sister". Her cause for beatification was permitted to be introduced in the Diocese of Bayeux and Lisieux in 2015, and she has been given the posthumous title Servant of God. Marie Léonie Martin was born in Alençon in the department of Orne in France on 3 June 1863. She was the third child born to Louis and Zélie Martin – both of whom were canonized on 18 October 2015 by Pope Francis. She had several siblings, including Thérèse, who was canonized within Léonie's lifetime. The Martin daughters each bore the first baptismal name "Marie", just as Zélie, her siblings and her nieces did, but only the eldest Martin child commonly used the name. As a child, Léonie had fragile health; at eighteen months old, she almost died. She suffered from the whooping cough in addition to measles with strong convulsions and eczema. She was a restless child, who was seen as a burden on her mother, who suffered much to care for her – a difficult child. She was so disruptive at the Visitation convent school that she was asked to leave. Her mother died on 28 August 1877, leaving the fourteen-year-old Léonie with her father and sisters. With his own siblings long since buried and Zélie's sister predeceasing her in February 1877, Louis Martin and his five daughters then moved to Lisieux to be near their remaining close family, (Marie) Isidore Guérin, his wife and daughters. Léonie was a boarding pupil at the school run by the Benedictine nuns of the Abbey of Notre Dame du Pré in Lisieux, where Thérèse later studied. Louis and Zélie both unsuccessfully pursued monastic lives before their marriage.