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On December 18, 2024, Pope Francis approved the equipollent canonization of Blessed Thérèse of St. Augustine, Mother Superior of the Carmelites of Compiègne, and her 15 companions, assassinated during the French Revolution.
An equipollent canonization means that the nuns have not gone through the complete, lengthy process for usual canonizations, but that their sanctity is simply recognized.
These nuns are particularly famous around the world due to a 1956 opera, Dialogue of the Carmelites, by Francis Poulenc, based on a work by the same name by Georges Bernanos, which was itself based on The Song at the Scaffold by Gertrud von Le Fort.
The Carmelite nuns were guillotined in 1794 during the closing days of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution.
After threats and denunciations in a climate of persecution of the Church, the nuns were taken from Compiègne to Paris by cart. They were brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal on July 17, 1794. Condemned, they were executed the same evening at 8:00 p.m. in the Place du Trône — today’s Place de la Nation — and their bodies were thrown into the Fosse commune de Picpus.
Their crime? “Fanaticism and sedition,” declared the public prosecutor. Their story made a lot of noise and became anchored in popular memory. Especially since, when they went up to the scaffold one by one, each of the nuns kissed a little statue of the Virgin held in her hand by their prioress. Before being guillotined in turn, the prioress gave the statue to the crowd, and it became a relic preserved and prayed before today in the crypt of the Carmel of Jonquières-Compiègne.
In the eyes of the Church, it is clear that the 16 Carmelites died because they did not want to renounce their faith. Recognized as martyrs, they were beatified on May 27, 1906, by Pope Pius X and their feast day was included in the liturgical calendar on July 17, their date of death.
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Founder of Emmanuel Community
In addition, Pope Francis authorized the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints to issue a decree recognizing the heroic virtues of the founder of the Emmanuel Community, Pierre Goursat, who is now recognized as “venerable.”
And today we celebrate...