On May 16, 2002, thirty years after his death, John Paul II beatified Padre Pio. It is the official recognition by the Church of his immense personal virtues, his charismatic gifts and the exceptional mission he had in the Church of the 20th century. From 1887 to 1968, his spiritual adventure was that of a whole man given to God.
Thérèse de l'Enfant Jésus or Thérèse de Lisieux (1873-1897) is one of the most popular saints in the Catholic Church and beyond. She entered the Carmel of Lisieux at the age of fifteen and died at the age of twenty-four. She left three autobiographical writings. They were published posthumously, somewhat truncated and recast as a whole, under the title Histoire d'une âme. This book was an immediate success, because it painted from within that "spiritual childhood" that Christ evokes in the Gospel and that it is impossible to invent without living it. The Autobiographical Manuscripts, published in 1957, restore the original text of the three writings left by Therese. She appears with her spontaneity, her sensitivity, an inimitable tone and even a kind of fantasy. But there is also the ordeal of darkness that she had to endure in the last months of her life - and that tells the true dimension of her spiritual "warfare".
