Front and back. Source: MM, 5S.

A note attached to it states that it was given by Mother Thérèse to her nephew, Father Léon Couderc. The foundress herself had received it from her superior, Mother Marie Aimée, upon her return from an exploratory trip to establish the Rome community.

This modest object bears witness to Mother Thérèse’s attachment to the Church. By passing this medal on to a priest in her family, she symbolically bequeathed a loyalty inherited from Father Terme.

Indeed, in her memoirs, Mother Josephine Grégoire recounts Father Terme’s zeal in 1830, when he solemnly declared: “My sisters, if you ever see me separate myself from the Supreme Pontiff, do not follow me.” To a sister who replied that the temptation would be great, he responded forcefully: “Anathema, anathema to anyone who would detach themselves from the Chair of Saint Peter!”

Mother Thérèse took up this cry of the founder as her own. As Mother Marie Aimée Lautier reported at the beatification trial, she had great veneration for everything that came from the Church and, in her abandonment to divine goodness, placed what was most dear to her on the same level: “the Church and our Society.”