One hundred years after her death, a young French nun who wrote one book will tomorrow join the tiny elite of intellectual theologians called the Doctors of the Roman Catholic Church.
Pope John Paul II will bestow the title upon St Therese of Lisieux during a Mass which recalls the turmoil of self-examination the church went through in 1970 before it honoured the only two other women to be named Doctors.
Therese, a watchmaker's daughter who became a Carmelite nun at the age of 15 and died of tuberculosis in an obscure convent nine years later on September 30th, 1897, becomes the 33rd Doctor in history and joins the ranks of such intellectual giants as St Thomas Aquinas. She follows the 14th-century Italian, St Catherine of Sienna, and the 16th-century Spaniard, St Teresa of Avila, as the third woman so honoured.
The decision to name them threw the church into a bout of doctrinal questioning when the then Pope Paul VI wondered whether it might be used as a wedge to open the door to women becoming priests. Vatican theologians reassured him otherwise, but the move remained controversial, particularly the choice of Catherine of Sienna, who could not read or write.
"When he extended the ranks of Doctor of the Church to women who had not written theological theses, Paul VI shook up the traditional criteria and admitted women who had been denied access to knowledge previously reserved for men," said the auxiliary bishop of Lisieux, Dr Guy Gaucher.
Apart from the illiterate Catherine, there has on the face of it been no more unlikely candidate for the title of Doctor than Therese of Lisieux, who wrote only one book, a spiritual autobiography entitled Story of a Soul. Written with a childlike simplicity, it is, however, one of the most widely read religious autobiographies and, by addressing itself in particular to unbelievers, it has earned Therese special veneration.