Convent and Church of Saint Teresa

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Inside the walled city of Ávila, a baroque church rises on the very spot where Teresa was born on March 28, 1515: the Carmelites raised it between 1629 and 1636, and the chapel to the left of the altar stands over the room of her birth. As a girl she slipped out through these streets with her brother Rodrigo, off to seek martyrdom among the Moors, until an uncle caught them at the city gate; the garden where she played still adjoins the church. The woman that child became would reform Carmel from within, founding Saint Joseph's in this same city in 1562 and sixteen more convents across Spain on foot and by mule cart, writing the Interior Castle and the words Nada te turbe, let nothing disturb you, God alone suffices. She died on the night of October 4, 1582, the very night Spain adopted the Gregorian calendar and ten days vanished, so her feast falls today, October 15. In 1970 Paul VI declared her the first woman Doctor of the Church; in La Santa, pilgrims venerate her relics where her story began.