Who were Sts. Louis and Zélie Martin?
Louis Martin was born in Bordeaux on August 22, 1823, the son of an army officer, and grew up moving from garrison to garrison until the family settled in Alençon, in Normandy. He trained as a watchmaker in Rennes, Strasbourg and Paris. He thought about becoming a monk and gave it up, the Sanctuary of Lisieux says, because he could not manage the Latin. In 1850 he opened a watchmaker's and jeweler's shop in Alençon.
Zélie Guérin, baptized Azélie-Marie, was born on December 23, 1831, at Gandelain, near Saint-Denis-sur-Sarthon, the daughter of a gendarme. She wanted to be a nun and was turned away. So she learned to make Alençon lace, the fine needle lace the town was known for, and by the end of 1853 she had her own business, with lacemakers working from their homes.
They met in April 1858 on the Pont Saint-Léonard in Alençon. The civil wedding took place at the town hall on July 12, 1858, at ten in the evening, and the church wedding at midnight, in the first minutes of July 13, at Notre-Dame of Alençon. That is why the sources give two dates: the Carmelite postulation says "the night of July 13," and July 12, the day the marriage began, is now their feast.
Nine children were born to them between 1860 and 1873: Marie, Pauline, Léonie, Céline, Thérèse, and four who did not live. Franciscan Media says two sons and two daughters died in infancy; the postulation's words are that "they lost four at an early age, but neither their mourning nor trials weakened their deep faith." Zélie ran the lace business from home through all of it, and Louis managed it with her. The youngest, Thérèse, was born on January 2, 1873, and baptized at Notre-Dame two days later.
Zélie had felt a lump in her breast as early as 1865. It became cancer. She died at Alençon on August 28, 1877, in her forty-sixth year, with her husband and her brother beside her. Louis, a widower with five daughters between four and seventeen, moved the family to Lisieux to be near Zélie's relatives. One by one the girls went to the convent. In old age Louis fell ill with a disease that, the Sanctuary of Alençon says, caused severe mental disturbances. The two main accounts of his last years differ. The Sanctuary of Lisieux says he was admitted to the Bon Sauveur hospital in Caen in 1889 and stayed there more than three years, then was brought home paralyzed; Franciscan Media says he died a few months after being committed to a sanitarium. He died on July 29, 1894, in his seventy-first year.
They were beatified at Lisieux on October 19, 2008, and canonized together by Pope Francis in St. Peter's Square on October 18, 2015. In his homily that day the pope said they "practised Christian service in the family, creating day by day an environment of faith and love which nurtured the vocations of their daughters, among whom was Saint Therese of the Child Jesus." The cause of their daughter Léonie, who became a Visitation nun, was opened the same year.
Why Catholics pray to Louis and Zélie for marriage, family and a pregnancy
There is no decree naming the Martins patrons of anything. Their patronage of married couples and parents is traditional and very young, and it grew for a plain reason: they were canonized together, as a couple, for the holiness of an ordinary married life, and not for anything either of them did alone.
What people bring to them is what they lived. A couple whose marriage has gone quiet since the children came. Parents who are exhausted. A woman waiting for a child, or carrying one in fear, or who has lost one. Zélie buried four babies and kept going; the Martins knew, as Franciscan Media puts it, both great joy and deep sorrow, and believed God was with them in both. Louis's last years, with an illness that took his reason, make him close to families caring for a parent with dementia and to anyone ashamed of a mental illness in the house. The sanctuary at Alençon, on the rue Saint-Blaise, blesses couples with the Martins' relics, some of them on their wedding anniversaries.
How to pray to Louis and Zélie
July 12 is their day. It is not on the General Roman Calendar, so most parishes will not keep it at Mass; the Church's calendar for the United States simply lists the day as a weekday. Married couples might also pray to them on their own anniversary. A novena is usually made in the nine days before July 12.
The prayer below is for a husband and wife to say together, if they can, or for one of them to say alone. If you are praying about a pregnancy, say it with the child's name, if the child has one. Bring the intention to Mass, and go to Confession together before an anniversary.
If a pregnancy is in danger, or a child is sick, prayer accompanies the doctor; it does not replace the appointment. If one of you is sinking the way Louis sank, the family's prayers accompany a diagnosis and treatment. Louis was cared for in a hospital and then brought home; both were acts of love. Ask the Martins to pray for that kind of courage.