Thérèse de Lisieux patronne de la France (1944) et Docteur de l’Église (1997) : renouvellement des fonctions de la sainteté
Résumé
Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897) was canonized in 1925. Her posterity goes with the evolution of the Catholic world throughout the 20th century.
An extraordinary fame, which earned her a series of honours: among others, patron saint of the missions (1927), secondary patroness of France (1944), Doctor of the Church (1997). This unexpected patronage of France went unnoticed at the time; a national patronage usually refers to the possibility of a collective salvation, but in this case Pius xii gave it a spiritual meaning, focused on Christianisation. Some people received it as a support for the experiments of the Mission de France and other movements dedicated to working class evangelization. France, a land of missionaries, became a land of missions. Therese, patron saint of the missions, became in the middle of the 20th century a reference for those who promoted a new way of evangelization: living with, instead of converting. In 1997, the context is widely different. When pope John Paul ii awards the grade of Doctor of the Church to Therese, that both shows and increases a new stage of the internalization movement: evangelization means, at this time, personal conversion. The success of the term «Doctor of divine love», popularized by the relics pilgrimage all around the world, expresses a new mode of Catholic universality. Thus the patronage of the France, granted to Thérèse, looks like a paradox stage in a
secular trend: the dissociation between nationality and sanctity.
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