Louis Martin, before marrying Zelia, wanted to enter a monastery. They had 9 children, of whom only five daughters survived and all became nuns. Zelia Martin died from cancer at a young age, when Therese was only 4. Aged 15, Therese entered the Carmelites where she died of tuberculosis at the age of 24 (in 1897). She was beatified in 1923 and canonised in 1925 in Rome by Pius XI. Zelia and Louis Martin’s beatification takes place 85 years after the beatification of their daughter Therese, who is one of the ten patron saints of the World Youth Day of Sydney. In his message for the World Youth Day, Benedict XVI proposed her to the young as an example: "Dear friends, be holy, be missionaries, because holiness can never be separated from the mission. Don’t be afraid of becoming saints like Therese of the Jesus Child, who was a missionary although she had not left the Carmelites".
