(October 21, 2008) The second married couple to be beatified together can motivate
families to live Christian virtue just as they taught their daughter-saint to desire
holiness, says a Vatican official. This was affirmed by Cardinal José Saraiva Martins,
retired prefect of the Congregation for Saints' Causes, when he presided over the
beatification of Louis Martin and Marie-Zélie Guérin, the parents of St. Thérèse of
the Child Jesus. The couple was beatified Sunday in Lisieux in the presence of some
15,000 people. The first married couple to be beatified together -- Italians Luigi
and Maria Beltrame Quattrocchi, who died in 1951 and 1965, respectively, were beatified
in 2001 by Pope John Paul II.Martin and Guérin were the parents of nine children,
four of whom died as children. After concluding the beatification rite, Cardinal Saraiva
Martins gave "thanks to God for this exemplary testimony of conjugal love." Their
example, the prelate assured, can "motivate Christian families in the integral practice
of Christian virtues, just as it stimulated in Thérèse the desire for sanctity." Cardinal
Saraiva Martins said that in the moment of the beatification, "I thought of my father
and my mother, and in this moment, I would like you to also think in your fathers
and mothers, and that together, we give thanks to God for having created us and made
us Christians, thanks to the conjugal love of our parents." The cardinal presented
the Martins as "a gift for spouses of all ages because of the esteem, respect and
harmony with which they loved each other for 19 years." Among those who participated
in the ceremony was Pietro Schiliro, an Italian child whose unexplainable cure in
2002 was attributed to the intercession of Martin and Guérin.