The fourth of the twelve children of Claude Michel and Anne Méry, Marie-Victoire Couderc was born on 1 February 1805 in Mas de Sablières, between the countryside and mountains of Vivarais, in the department of Ardèche.

Peasants with few resources, her parents were able to provide her with an education only between the ages of 17 and 20, at the Sisters of Saint Joseph in Les Vans. Her entire life was spent in villages and towns (Aps, Les Vans, Sablières, La Louvesc) in the diocese of Viviers. In 1825, Maria Vittoria had the opportunity to listen to the missionary Father Terme, who came to her town for a series of preaching. He was a priest also known as the founder (1821) of the teaching nuns, called “of Saint Francis Régis” (from the name of the great Jesuit evangelizer of the seventeenth century, who died while preaching in these lands and was buried in La Louvesc). This meeting helped her find a path.

Father Terme welcomed her among his nuns, and in 1827 she took her vows with the name of Sister Teresa. The following year she went up with two nuns to the thousand meters of La Louvesc, to run a hostel that in the summer welcomed women and girls on pilgrimage to the tomb of Saint Francis Régis. There, in 1829, she was already a reformer: the hostel became a house of prayer.

The diversification of tasks leads to a distinction between the nuns: the teachers remain “Sisters of Saint Francis Régis”; those involved in spiritual retreats take the name of “Ladies of the retreat at the Cenacle”. In 1834, after the death of Father Terme, Teresa places herself under the guidance of Father Renault, provincial of the Jesuits, who in 1836 separates the teaching nuns from those of the retreat.

It is she who leads the latter, but not for long. In 1838 she is dismissed, and in her place a woman who has recently entered the institute is appointed, with the title of countess. (She will then be dismissed before she damages the institute). Teresa responds to all this by inviting her sisters to obey the new arrival. Once the countess is “fired”, Teresa remains in the corner: for many she is now “the elder”. They will then call her to face a crisis in the community of Paris. She will be local superior here and there, but excluded from the top; and always very sure of working for the Institute of the Cenacle just like that, from offense to offense. She repeats that one must abandon oneself to God (se livrer). She obeys, is silent, sees the community grow, which takes the name of “Our Lady of the Cenacle”, spread throughout the world as a “simple and happy religious formula: a synthesis of contemplative life and active life; of personal, community and social life, of silence and of speech" (Paul VI).

Mother Teresa, after having given this gift to the Church, goes from one small community to another. Sick, she does not ask to be healed, but to know how to face evil. While the Institute opens to France and the world, she is peripheral superior in Fourvières, and the announcement of her death is given by the sisters with the singing of the Magnificat. Paul VI will proclaim her a saint in 1970. Her body is kept in an urn in the cenacle of La Louvesc-Ardèche (France).

• https://www.causesanti.va/it/santi-e-beati/teresa-couderc.html