Elisabeth Leseur
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Servant of God Elisabeth Leseur (October 16, 1866–May 3, 1914), who is best known for her spiritual diary, was born Pauline Elisabeth Arrighi in Paris to a wealthy bourgeois French family of Corsican descent. In 1887 she met Félix Leseur (1861–1950), a journalist who was also from an affluent, observant Catholic family. Shortly before they married on July 31, 1889, Elisabeth discovered that Félix was no longer a practicing Catholic and had become a complete agnostic.
Despite Félix's pledge to respect Elisabeth's religious beliefs, he increasingly ridiculed her piety and made it difficult for her to go to Mass. After Félix persuaded Elisabeth in 1897 to read Ernest Renan's Life of Jesus in an attempt to weaken her hold on organized religion, she recommitted herself to observing the Catholic faith.
Elisabeth began to write her spiritual diary in 1899, which she kept until a few weeks before her death of breast cancer in 1914. After Félix discovered the diary after Elisabeth's death, he returned to Catholicism. He entered the Dominican Order in 1919 and was ordained a priest in 1923.
The cause for the canonization of Elisabeth Leseur was started in 1934.
[edit] Suggested reading
- Leseur, Elisabeth. The Secret Diary of Elisabeth Leseur: The Woman Whose Goodness Changed Her Husband from Atheist to Priest. Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2002. ISBN 1-928832-48-2
- — —. Selected Writings. Ed. and trans. Janet K. Ruffing. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8091-4329-1
- Raoul, Valerie. "Women's Diaries as Life-Savings: Who Decides Whose Life is Saved? The Journals of Eugénie de Guérin and Elisabeth Leseur." Biography 24:1 (Winter 2001): 140-151.
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