Saint Louis Martin

Louis Martin (22 August 1823 – 29 July 1894) and Azélie-Marie "Zélie" Guérin Martin (23 December 1831 – 28 August 1877) were a French Catholic couple and the parents of five nuns, including Thérèse of Lisieux, a Carmelite canonized by the Catholic Church in 1925, and her elder sister Léonie Martin, a Visitation Sister declared a Servant of God in 2015. That same year, the couple became the first in Catholic history to be canonized together. Louis Joseph Aloys Stanislaus Martin was the third of five children of Pierre-François Martin and Marie-Anne-Fanny Boureau. All his siblings died before reaching age 30. Although Louis intended to become a monk, wishing to enter the Augustinian Great St. Bernard Monastery, he was rejected because he did not succeed at learning Latin. Later he decided to become a watchmaker and studied his craft in Rennes and in Strasbourg. Azélie-Marie Guérin was born in Gandelain Orne, France in 1831. She was the second daughter of Isidore Guérin and Louise-Jeanne Macé. She had an older sister, Marie-Louise, who became a Visitandine nun, and a younger brother, Isidore, who was a pharmacist. Her maternal family was from the Madré, in the neighbouring department of Mayenne, where her grandfather, Louis Macé, was baptised on 16 March 1778. Zélie wanted to become a nun, but was turned away by the Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul due to respiratory difficulties and recurrent headaches. She then prayed for God to give her many children and that they would be consecrated to God. She later decided to become a lacemaker, manufacturing Alençon lace. She fell in love with the watchmaker Louis Martin in 1858 and married him, only three months later, on 13 July 1858, at the Basilica of Notre-Dame in Alençon. Zélie's business became so successful that, in 1870, Louis sold his watchmaking business to go into partnership with her.