There is something deliciously paradoxical in the objections that, in 1914, Monsignor Alessandro Verde formulated against the introduction of the cause of Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus. The more one reads them, the more one notices that that most severe Roman jurist saw with extraordinary lucidity what was new in Thérèse; only that, at the beginning, he contemplated that novelty from legal categories that could hardly contain it. He did not properly deny that she was a saint. His difficulty was another and, in a way, more interesting: how to demonstrate juridically the heroism of a life whose greatness had consisted precisely in not seeming great? This is the true story of the so-called “devil’s advocate” of Saint Thérèse. And it is worth telling without caricatures, because Alessandro Verde was not an enemy of Thérèse, but one of those severe men who, without intending to, forced the Church to ask itself more deeply what holiness is.
A fearsome prosecutor before a young Discalced Carmelite
The so-called “devil’s advocate” was, technically, the Promoter of the Faith of the Sacred Congregation of Rites. His office consisted in subjecting causes of beatification and canonization to a true test of resistance: pointing out gaps, contradictions, weak testimonies, possible exaggerations, procedural defects, and anything that might cast doubt on a reputation for holiness. He was not there to be moved, but precisely not to be moved too soon.
Alessandro Verde, born in 1865, had entered the Congregation of Rites in 1896, had been appointed sub-promoter of the Faith in 1897 and Promoter in 1902. In 1915 he would become secretary of the Congregation and Pius XI would create him cardinal in 1925, precisely the year of Thérèse’s canonization. In the correspondence related to the cause he was regarded as a fearsome censor. On April 8, 1914, he signed his Animadversiones, twenty-five pages of objections. Formally they appear numbered from 1 to 23, although in reality there are twenty-four, because the numbering contains two numbers 17. Ten days later, on April 18, the lawyers of the cause responded with a memorial of fifty-five pages. On June 9 the Congregation of Rites issued a favorable opinion and, the following day, Pius X signed the introduction of the cause. But it would be a mistake to dismiss Verde simply by saying that Rome did not heed him. Some of his objections were serious. Precisely for that reason it is so instructive to observe where his strength lay and where his limit lay.
A saint manufactured by a book?
The fundamental objection runs through almost all his writing: before Story of a Soul, who had seen in Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus an extraordinary holiness? Thérèse had died at twenty-four, after only nine years in Carmel. She had done nothing! A good part of her own companions had considered her a good, sweet, and pious religious, but nothing spectacular. But exactly one year after her death, a book appeared that revealed an unsuspected spiritual depth and had a formidable diffusion. Verde noted the figures: tens of thousands of copies sold and, only between July 1909 and July 1910, more than 183,000 images requested from Carmel, plus tens of thousands of mementos. Some witnesses even acknowledged that “much noise” had been made around Thérèse and that in certain Carmels the intensity of that diffusion was judged excessive.
Verde’s question was penetrating: are we facing a spontaneous reputation for holiness or the extraordinary editorial success of an autobiography? However, here appears the first misunderstanding. The diffusion of a holiness through a book does not prove that that holiness was produced by the book. It proves only that the book made known what until then had been hidden. And that was exactly what had happened.
Thérèse’s manuscripts were not born as a plea prepared for a future canonization. The first manuscript was written in 1895 by order of Mother Agnes for the family circle; the second arose from a request by Marie of the Sacred Heart; the third was drafted in 1897 by order of the prioress, Mother Marie de Gonzague, when Thérèse was already gravely ill. The apostolic process expressly preserves Mother Agnes’s testimony concerning the obediential origin of those texts. It is true that, in her last months, Thérèse understood that those writings could do good after her death. But foreseeing the apostolic fruitfulness of a writing is not the same as writing an autobiography to manufacture a halo for oneself. Between the two things lies the entire distance that separates the author’s vanity from the spiritual awareness of a mission.
Here history ended up inverting Verde’s objection. What in 1914 could seem suspicious—that Thérèse’s holiness was known fundamentally thanks to her writings—would end up being precisely one of the great arguments for declaring her, in 1997, a Doctor of the Church. John Paul II would affirm that in those writings one discovers a “particular charism of wisdom,” an original experience of grace, and an authentic “science of love.” The book did not create Thérèse: it made her visible.
“Everything stays in the family”
Verde’s second great objection was directed against the witnesses. Four blood sisters of Thérèse testified in the process; three of them—Pauline, Marie, and Céline—plus her cousin Marie, had also lived with her in the same Carmel. Their declarations had been carefully prepared and contained numerous words, memories, and observations about Thérèse. Verde suspected that that set could become an overly favorable family reconstruction.
The precaution is legitimate. A sibling is not necessarily a false witness, but neither is he an indifferent witness. However, the dossier was considerably broader than the small circle of the Martins. In the ordinary process forty-eight witnesses were heard; the later edition published thirty-seven declarations because eleven referred only to miracles. There were Carmelites, priests, religious, and laypeople, and some far from complacent declarations were carefully incorporated into the acts. The sisters prepared their depositions, certainly, but they did so from the official questionnaire and in that documentation frank and even uncomfortable data appeared.
This is a decisive detail: if there had existed an operation simply to manufacture an impeccable Thérèse, it is quite strange that so many adverse observations about her have reached us, precisely thanks to the process. One sister opined that Thérèse did nothing extraordinary; another found her of little use for work; another thought it was easy to be a saint living surrounded by one’s own sisters. Verde collects those phrases with scrupulosity. But their existence paradoxically demonstrates that the documentation was not cleaned until only incense remained.
And there is something even more interesting. Mother Marie de Gonzague, whose possible reserve toward Thérèse was especially useful to Verde, left testimonies that hardly square with the thesis of a reputation created solely afterward by Story of a Soul. On November 11, 1897, when the book had not yet appeared, she wrote to Father Roulland that Thérèse’s life had been “love and sacrifice” and that she had suffered a true martyrdom. In the book of professions she would later leave an extraordinary praise of her humility, obedience, charity, prudence, and regularity. There was no immediate unanimity, but holiness is not decided by vote in the recreation room.
A saint without a spiritual director
Verde then put his finger on a most delicate point: if Thérèse’s holiness was essentially interior and barely visible, who could guarantee that interior world? The ideal testimony would have been that of the habitual confessor who had known her conscience deeply. And that testimony was lacking.
Moreover, Thérèse spoke of Jesus as her true Director and confessed the difficulty she had had in finding stable spiritual direction. Verde saw here a danger: a very young girl who seemed to advance by herself in spiritual matters, even elaborating a “little way,” could have confused inspiration with subjectivism. Carried to the extreme, the suspicion even raised the specter of quietism.
But Thérèse was not a religious autodidact who had decided to dispense with the Church. She had a spiritual relationship with the Jesuit Almire Pichon; she received from the Franciscan Alexis Prou, during the 1891 retreat, the decisive confirmation that she would describe as having launched her “full sail upon the waves of trust and love”; she consulted confessors and followed concrete advice, even during her terrible trial against faith.
Father Pichon himself later declared that Thérèse presented her difficulties with sobriety, without insisting on imposing her own opinion, and that it was easy to direct her. This is a precious observation because it touches exactly the point Verde considered problematic. That Thérèse inwardly discovered a way of her own does not mean that she set herself up as her own magisterium. There comes a moment when the helps received from outside do not replace the immediate action of grace. John of the Cross did not learn from a confessor the Living Flame of Love. Teresa of Jesus obeyed, consulted, and suffered confessors (as gifted as she was, she never spoke of “directors”), but the experience that gave rise to the Interior Castle was hers. Spiritual direction discerns grace; it does not manufacture it.
The most serious problem: Thérèse testified about Thérèse
Perhaps this was the juridically strongest objection. If Story of a Soul is the principal source for knowing Thérèse’s interior heroism, then Thérèse becomes the principal witness in her own cause. And an accused cannot be his own judge, nor can a candidate for the altars demonstrate his holiness through a self-portrait.
Verde was right about one thing: an autobiography cannot be accepted naïvely as conclusive proof of that very thing which its author affirms about himself. But it does not follow from this that it is useless. The autobiography allows one to know the interior; the witnesses allow one to verify whether that interior corresponded to conduct. And there lies precisely the value of convergence. When Thérèse speaks of patience, charity, self-renunciation, silence before humiliations, obedience, or abandonment, the process later seeks what those who lived with her saw. One does not canonize the book isolated from the life; one confronts the book with the life.
It is especially significant that the apostolic process preserves testimonies of religious not belonging to the Martin family who describe precisely that evenness of temper, humility, self-forgetfulness, and love of God that the manuscripts present from within. An elderly religious, Sister Marie Philomène, would declare that she did not think it possible to possess less self-seeking and greater evenness of character. The autobiography, therefore, did not replace the witnesses. It allowed one to understand what the witnesses had seen without always understanding its depth.
The scandal of a holiness that went unnoticed
Here Verde reaches the heart of the question. He even admits, in one of the most impressive passages of his Animadversiones, that Thérèse was perhaps truly holy “before God.” His difficulty is that the Church needs proofs. If all her heroism had remained hidden in the heart, how could it be demonstrated?
For Verde, heroic virtue had to possess a greatness capable of imposing itself on the eyes. Thérèse, on the other hand, had practiced small renunciations, small patiences, small charities, small humiliations. Nothing like the great fasts, penances, foundations, pilgrimages, or spectacular gestures that abounded in so many classical lives of saints. Even her death had been outwardly ordinary.
This is probably the most beautiful objection because it already contains, without knowing it, the answer. Verde was asking Thérèse to demonstrate heroism according to a model that Thérèse had come precisely to broaden. The “little way” does not deny heroism but transfers its stage. The heroic can consist in dying a martyr before an executioner; but it can also consist in enduring for years, without dramatizing, what daily mortifies self-love. The material object can be small while the interior act reaches an extraordinary intensity. A smile can cost more than a hair shirt. It is not always the exterior size of the act that measures the degree of charity with which it is performed.
The Church would eventually define it formally. On August 14, 1921, it declared proven in Thérèse the heroism of the theological and cardinal virtues. And beneath that decree appears a signature laden with providential irony: “Alexandre Verde, Secretary of the Sacred Congregation of Rites.” The same man who in 1914 had asked where the heroism was ended up signing the decree that declared that it was there.
“She did nothing extraordinary”
Verde also uses the discordant testimonies of some Carmelites. One religious wondered what they could write about Thérèse after her death. Another said that “she did nothing remarkable.” Another found her piety childish and superficial. Mother Marie de Gonzague had had her own variations of judgment. For the Promoter of the Faith, that lack of unanimity seriously weakened the fama sanctitatis.
But here another extraordinarily Teresian inversion occurs. That some religious saw nothing exceptional in Thérèse does not constitute a refutation of her way; it constitutes almost its perfect illustration. Thérèse did not seek to appear extraordinary. If she had traversed the passages of Carmel visibly showing that she was practicing heroic virtues, her doctrine of littleness and self-forgetfulness would have fared rather poorly. Her holiness had to be transparent to one who knew how to look, but it could pass unnoticed by one who identified holiness with extraordinary phenomena.
Moreover: the presence of hostile opinions makes the favorable testimonies more valuable. We are not before a community collectively hypnotized by an admirable sister, but before real women, with sympathies and antipathies, who lived together in a few square meters for years. Some did not understand her, others changed their opinion, and others very soon saw something exceptional. Christian holiness has never required being recognized by all contemporaries. Had this been the criterion, the causes of not a few saints would have ended before they began.
“Vous savez bien que vous soignez une petite sainte”
Still more delicate was the accusation of lack of humility. Verde found surprising phrases in the sisters’ testimonies. Thérèse had spoken of what would happen after her death, had asked that her objects be preserved, had announced that she would make a “shower of roses” fall, and on one occasion said smiling to her sisters: “You know well that you are caring for a little saint.” For the Roman jurist, that could seem a consciousness too satisfied with one’s own holiness.
Viewed in isolation, the phrase is formidable ammunition for a devil’s advocate. Viewed within Thérèse, it changes completely, because her entire doctrine consists precisely in renouncing to attribute holiness to oneself as a possession. She does not trust in her merits; she trusts in mercy. She does not say: I am great and therefore I will go to heaven. She says exactly the opposite: I am small and I hope everything from God.
One of the process testimonies preserves this teaching of hers: she acknowledged that she did not always do what she herself advised, but added that she did not become discouraged and returned to abandon herself into the arms of Jesus. Her humility did not consist in denying the gifts received, but in denying that they were her own possession. Here Benedict XV would give, seven years later, an answer almost point by point to the objection. In officially explaining Thérèse’s spiritual childhood, he affirmed that it excludes “the proud concept of self,” the presumption of attaining a supernatural end by human means, and the illusion of being self-sufficient; positively, it consists in trust and abandonment in God. It would be difficult to formulate a more exact refutation of the suspicion of presumption.
Christian humility does not oblige one to ignore what God does in a person. The Blessed Virgin can say that all generations will call her blessed and continue to be the humble handmaid of the Lord because, in the immediately preceding phrase, she has established the reason: “for the Mighty One has done great things for me.” The subject of the wonders is God. Thérèse speaks exactly from that grammar of the Magnificat.
And if that assurance came from the devil?
Verde pushed the argument even further. Where did Thérèse’s extraordinary assurance about her salvation, her future mission, and her action after death come from? It could naturally be attributed to God. But who had carried out sufficient discernment to rule out a spiritual illusion or a temptation to pride? Again the absent confessor appears.
The caution, in the abstract, is irreproachable. The Catholic spiritual tradition has always distrusted those who turn their private inspirations into indisputable certainty. But Thérèse’s assurance presents a feature that radically separates it from presumption: it does not rest on a conviction of impeccability. It coincides, precisely during her last months, with the great trial of faith, with the experience of darkness, with illness, and with the physical sensation of collapse. Her trust does not proceed from feeling spiritually powerful, but from continuing to hope when a good part of sensible consolation has disappeared. That is theologically very different. Presumption says: God owes me heaven because I am good. Thérèse says: I hope for heaven because God is merciful.
A doctrine too daring for a young girl?
Verde also did not let pass some expressions of the Act of Offering to Merciful Love. The theological censor had formulated reservations about certain turns of phrase that, interpreted too literally, could sound exaggerated. Verde was also concerned that so young a religious, without systematic theological studies and with scant stable direction, should formulate such a personal spiritual doctrine. The process of the writings, however, had already concluded with their approval in December 1912.
Here time has perhaps pronounced the most spectacular answer of all. That young woman without academic formation who aroused suspicions for daring to discover a way of her own would be proclaimed a Doctor of the Church. John Paul II did not precisely conceal that paradox: he emphasized that Thérèse lacked specialized theological formation, but recognized in her a singular intelligence of the Christian mystery, nourished by Scripture and by John of the Cross, and spoke expressly of “eminent doctrine.” Verde had perfectly detected the doctrinal audacity. He was mistaken only in asking whether so much audacity could proceed from so small a girl. The Church would end up answering that precisely it could.
A death too ordinary
The Promoter of the Faith was also disconcerted by Thérèse’s death: he expected, to a certain extent, that a truly exceptional heroism would leave some exceptional sign. In other saints, death had produced immediate impression, crowds, spontaneous reputation. In Thérèse there was no such explosion. Her celebrity came afterward.
But here too the history is not so simple. Before the publication of Story of a Soul there already exist very significant testimonies. Maurice Bellière, one of her spiritual brothers, wrote in July 1897, when Thérèse was still alive, referring to her as “the Saint.” Mother Marie de Gonzague, a few weeks after her death and before the book appeared, spoke of her life as an existence of love and sacrifice. There did not yet exist a universal fama sanctitatis, it is true, but neither did there exist the absolute void that Verde’s argumentation needed to suppose. The reputation was not created from nothing; it was amplified.
The Carmel’s propaganda
The objection deserved to be taken seriously: books, holy cards, and mementos were printed; priests and friends actively spread Thérèse’s figure; some Carmels judged that display excessive. Father Taylor acknowledged having propagated images and copies of the life in Great Britain, the British colonies, and the United States.
However, the process itself contains a supremely sensible distinction: diffusion does not necessarily equate to “fictitious promotion.” A witness declared that, many times, the prior conviction about her holiness led one to request the book or the mementos, and not the contrary; he added that the Carmelites had never pressured him to actively promote that cult.
And here a simple historical consideration is pertinent. No editorial campaign can by itself explain how a book written by an unknown Carmelite from a small Norman town crosses countries, cultures, and generations for more than a century. Propaganda can provoke a fashion. It can hardly by itself produce a universal spiritual tradition. The extraordinary diffusion of Thérèse, which Verde still viewed as a possible factor of suspicion, was contemplated by Benedict XV and later by the Magisterium as one of the indications of the ecclesial fruitfulness of her doctrine. John Paul II would recall in 1997 precisely the universality of her reception as a relevant element for recognizing her spiritual magisterium.
To her cousin she sent crosses
In the end, Verde did not even disdain an almost endearing detail. Among the innumerable persons who said they had received favors through Thérèse’s intercession, her cousin Jeanne Guérin La Néele declared that she invoked her, but seemed to receive “more crosses than consolations.” The Promoter of the Faith even took advantage of that to place one more small stone on the opposing scale.
It is difficult not to smile a little. That a saint sends crosses rather than consolations could be an objection against certain devotional expectations; against Christian holiness it seems an argument of quite limited efficacy. But the detail admirably portrays Verde: he did not want to leave anything unexamined, not even a disappointed cousin.
Verde’s great misunderstanding
At the end of his Animadversiones, Verde formulates his true difficulty. It can be granted—he comes to say—that Thérèse is a saint before God. But if that holiness remained hidden, if her reputation was born fundamentally from a text written by herself, and if unmistakable external manifestations of heroic virtue are lacking, perhaps there was not juridically sufficient matter to continue the cause.
This is the exact point where his objection is at once formidable and vulnerable, because Verde had noticed something that others perhaps had not yet understood: Thérèse forced one to rethink the relationship between heroism and visibility. His error did not consist so much in being severe as in identifying the heroic too closely with the extraordinary.
Thérèse came to recall that the Gospel possesses another measure. The cup of water can contain a heroic charity, silence can be martyrdom of self-love, a smile can be victory over an invincible repugnance. The smallness of the act does not imply smallness of love. And when millions of small acts are gathered under an absolute decision to live for God, perhaps the heroic consists precisely in no one having heard the noise of the battle.
That is why, in a way, the “devil’s advocate” was one of the first to understand Thérèse, although he understood her by opposition. He perceived that that girl altered a scheme of holiness, that her greatness did not fit too well with the model he expected to find, that her doctrine gave a new density to the ordinary, that her autobiography was inseparable from her mission, and that that young religious possessed an extraordinary assurance about what she had discovered. All that was true; only the sign of the conclusion needed to be changed.
The last detail
History had for Alessandro Verde a Teresian delicacy: he was not left defeated or humiliated; he continued serving the Congregation. In 1915 he was named secretary. In 1921 he signed the decree that recognized Thérèse’s heroic virtues. In 1925, the year Pius XI canonized her, Verde was created cardinal. He also followed with genuine interest the later stages of the cause, until dying in 1958, at 93 years of age, having been archpriest of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, as a cardinal without being a bishop!
There is no need, therefore, to place Thérèse and her “devil’s advocate” face to face as if one of the two had to be discredited. Verde did his work. And he did it so well that he forced one to formulate with precision what was original in the saint.
Perhaps that is why his objections are read today with a curious sensation. Each difficulty seems to open a door. The hidden holiness leads directly to the little way; the decisive weight of her writings already announces the future Doctor of the Church; that assurance which to the jurist seemed excessive is inseparable from her trust; the absence of great exploits allows one to understand the heroism of the small; and her conviction of a mission after death acquires a strange eloquence when one contemplates the expansion her voice has had throughout the world since 1897.
Alessandro Verde wanted to find the crack in Thérèse of the Child Jesus and ended up pointing out, one by one, the windows through which the light entered.