Louis Martin
1823-1894 19th century Feast day: July 12
A fatherhood that gives its children away without holding them back; the faith of a man stripped even of his dignity.
Who was Louis Martin?
A watchmaker in Alençon, turned away from the monastery of the Great St Bernard for want of Latin, he married Zélie Guérin and worked with her at lace-making. Of nine children, four died in infancy; the five surviving daughters all entered religious life, and he took the youngest himself to Rome to plead her case before the pope. Widowed, then struck by a disease of the brain, he spent three years in the Bon-Sauveur asylum at Caen, diminished and humiliated, before dying at his wife's family's country house, watched over by his daughter Céline.
In their own words
Come, let us go together before the Blessed Sacrament to thank the Lord, who does me the honour of taking my children from me.
I had never in my life been humiliated; I needed one.