Marthe Robin

At the heart of her physical and moral suffering, Marthe Robin experienced a profound spiritual turning point in December 1928. She made the choice to unite her broken life and her sufferings with those of the crucified Christ. Starting in 1930, she began to manifest extraordinary mystical phenomena, notably the stigmata of the Passion of Christ, which she relived in her flesh every week. She also entered a state of complete inediation (total absence of food and drink, her only sustenance being the weekly reception of the Eucharist) and agrypnia (total absence of sleep). On February 10, 1936, a decisive meeting took place between Marthe Robin and Father Georges Finet, a priest of the Diocese of Lyon. Under Marthe's spiritual inspiration, they founded together the work of the Foyers de Charité (initially called Foyers of Light, Charity, and Love). The first Foyer was established in Châteauneuf-de-Galaure, where the first five-day silent spiritual retreat was preached in September 1936. This work, composed of priests and laypeople living in community, has the mission of offering six-day spiritual retreats in silence to strengthen the faith of Christians and participate in the new evangelization. Despite her paralysis and progressive blindness, Marthe Robin exerted an immense spiritual influence from her room, where she personally received and advised more than 100,000 visitors throughout her life. She passed away on February 6, 1981, in Châteauneuf-de-Galaure.

The reputation for holiness of Marthe Robin, already immense during her lifetime, prompted the Foyers de Charité to request the opening of her cause for beatification five years after her death. In 1986, Bishop Didier-Léon Marchand, Bishop of Valence, officially opened the diocesan procedure. The diocesan inquiry took place from 1988 to 1996, gathering more than 120 testimonies and theological, medical, and historical expert reports, constituting a file of 17,000 pages. The legal validity of this inquiry was recognized by a decree of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints on April 24, 1998. The drafting of the Positio, a 2,000-page synthesis document presenting the virtues of the Servant of God, was finalized and signed on May 6, 2010.

On November 7, 2014, Pope Francis authorized the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to promulgate the decree recognizing the heroic nature of the virtues of Marthe Robin, thereby declaring her "Venerable." This decree attests that Marthe Robin lived the theological virtues (faith, hope, charity) and cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance) in a heroic manner. In December 2014, a file presenting an unexplained healing obtained through her intercession was submitted to Rome to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints. This potential miracle is currently under examination by the medical and theological commissions of the Vatican. To date, no miracle has yet been officially approved by papal decree, an essential step for her beatification.

The spirituality of Marthe Robin is deeply centered on the merciful love of God the Father and intimate union with the Passion of Jesus through the intercession of the Virgin Mary. Her life of offered suffering became a testimony of hope, reminding us that the Cross is a path to the Resurrection. She also anticipated the intuitions of the Second Vatican Council by insisting on the active role and the spiritual and intellectual formation of the laity in the Church. The primary legacy of Marthe Robin lies in the work of the Foyers de Charité. Recognized in 1986 by the Pontifical Council for the Laity as an international association of the faithful of pontifical right, the Foyers de Charité today include several dozen communities spread across five continents, welcoming tens of thousands of retreatants each year. Although her figure gives rise to historical and theological debates, particularly regarding the authenticity of her mystical phenomena and the history of the foundation, the Church maintains its judgment on the heroicity of her Christian virtues.