St. Therese of the Child Jesus was born in Alenon, France, the daughter of Blessed Louis Martin, a watchmaker, and Blessed Marie-Azlie Gurin, a lacemaker.[3] Both her parents were very religious. Louis had attempted to become a monk, but was refused because he knew no Latin. Azlie was rejected as a nun because she was considered to have no vocation; instead, she asked God to give her many children and let them all be consecrated to God. Louis and Zlie met in 1858 and married only three months later.[[1]] They had nine children, of whom only five daughtersMarie, Pauline, Lonie, Cline and Thrsesurvived to adulthood. Thrse was their youngest child. Azlie's lace business was so successful that Louis sold his watchmaking shop to his nephew and handled the traveling end of her lacemaking business. Zlie died of breast cancer in 1877, when Thrse was only four years old, and her father sold the business and moved to Lisieux, in the Calvados Department in Normandy, where Azlie's brother Isidore Gurin, a pharmacist, lived with his wife and two daughters Thrse studied at the Benedictine Abbey of Notre Dame du Pr. When she was nine years old, her sister Pauline, who had acted as a "second mother" to her, entered the Carmelite monastery at Lisieux. Thrse also wanted to enter Carmel, but was told she was too young. At 14, after her sister Marie entered the same Carmelite monastery, Thrse renewed her attempts to join the order, but the priest-superior of the monastery would not allow this on account of her youth. Later, her father took Thrse on a pilgrimage to Rome, and during a general audience with Pope Leo XIII, she asked him to allow her to enter at 15, but the Pope said: "Well, my child, do what the superiors decide." Shortly thereafter, the bishop of Bayeux authorized the prioress to receive Thrse, and in April 1888 she became a Carmelite postulant. In 1889 her father suffered a stroke and was taken to a private sanatorium, the Bon Sauveur at Caen, where he remained for three years before returning to Lisieux in 1892. He died in 1894. Upon his death, Cline, who had been caring for their father, entered the same Carmel as her three sisters, on 14 September 1894; their cousin, Marie Gurin, entered in 1895. Lonie, after several failed attempts, became Sister Franoise-Thrse, a nun in the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary at Caen