Mags GarganBlessed Luigi and Maria Beltrame Quattrocchi became the first married couple to be beatified together
The first two married couples beatified as couples and St Therese of Lisieux are being honoured during the extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family.
The relics of St Therese, her parents Blessed Louis and Marie Zelie Guerin Martin (pictured), and Blessed Luigi and Maria Beltrame Quattrocchi, are in Rome’s Basilica of St Mary Major for the duration of the synod.
Before the synod’s opening Mass in St Peter’s Basilica, Pope Francis venerated the relics, which were brought to St Peter’s just for the Mass.
Their presence and prominence underlined the importance of St Therese and the blessed spouses for today’s families.
Blessed Luigi and Maria Beltrame Quattrocchi became the first married couple to be beatified together. Declaring them blessed in 2001, St John Paul II called them models of holiness for all Christian spouses.
The husband was an Italian civil servant, a Church activist and promoter of social welfare, who eventually became the country’s assistant attorney general. He died in 1951.
When his wife was pregnant with their fourth child, doctors told her that she would die unless she aborted the baby.
The couple decided they couldn’t do that; a daughter was born in 1914 and the mother lived another 51 years.
All four children became priests or religious. Testifying to their parents’ holiness, as adults they said the couple seemed like ordinary parents at the time – they suffered through hardships and disease, argued a little, but mostly treated each other with a deep respect and love.
When St John Paul announced in 1997 he would declare St Therese of Lisieux a Doctor of the Church, he said that the humble and poor “Therese shows the ‘little way’ of children who confide in the Father with ‘bold trust.’ The heart of her message, her spiritual attitude, is for all the faithful”.
Her parents were beatified in 2008, making them the second married couple to be beatified as a couple.
They were also the first parents of a saint to be beatified, highlighting the important role parents play in their children’s human and spiritual upbringing.