Thérèse felt an early call to religious life and in 1888, at only 15, became a nun in the cloistered Carmelite community of Lisieux, Normandy.
After nine years as a Carmelite religious, and having spent her last eighteen months struggling with a “dark night of the soul” and doubts of her Christian faith, she died of tuberculosis at the age of 24. Her autobiography “The Story of a Soul” is still widely read.
Together with Saint Francis of Assisi, she is one of the most popular saints in the history of the church. Pope Pius X called her “the greatest saint of modern times” while his successor Pius XI declared her Patroness of the Gardens of Vatican City, the “Sacred Keeper of the Gardens”
Poggis’s modernist Pop Art portrayal depicts her as a Child who is also a Saint, an unusual combination.
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