Louis and Zélie Martin: Videos from Alençon for the Anniversary of Their Canonization
/October 18, 2026, marked the eleventh anniversary of the canonization of Saints Louis and Zélie Martin. To mark the occasion, I draw attention to two collections of French-language videorecordings made available by their shrine at Alençon during the tenth-anniversary year, 2025.
These presentations offer opportunities to explore the Martins’ lives and spirituality, their historical setting, and their significance for families today. I am pleased to make these collections better known and to explain how readers who do not understand French may begin to explore them.
English-speaking viewers can use YouTube’s automatically translated captions to help follow the presentations.
How to follow the videos in English
The presentations are in French. To display automatically translated English captions, open each video on YouTube itself rather than watching it within this page or the shrine’s website. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the embedded video, turn on captions, then select Settings → Subtitles/CC → Auto-translate → English. These are automatic translations, not reviewed subtitles.
To read the accompanying text on the shrine’s pages in English, use the language dropdown next to the French flag at the upper right and select English. This translates the page text; video captions are controlled separately in the YouTube player.
October 2025: Conferences from the tenth-anniversary celebrations
The shrine has made available two conferences by Bishop Jean Bondu from the tenth-anniversary celebrations in Alençon in October 2025. The first is about Louis and Zélie’s spiritual life; the second, about holiness in marriage.
Visit the shrine’s page about the October 2025 celebrations; see both conferences there.
For automatically translated English captions, click “Watch on YouTube” in the video below, then follow the instructions above.
March 2025: “Louis and Zélie Martin: Saints for Our Time?”
In March 2025, the shrine hosted a colloquium, “Louis and Zélie Martin: Saints for Our Time?”, to consider the Martins in their historical setting and to ask how their lives speak to families today.
I invite you to explore the videos of these presentations, which address the historical context, the Martins’ family and social spirituality, Léonie’s place in the family, and holiness amid family fragility and limitations. Contributors include Father Thierry Hénault-Morel, historian Agnès Walch, and Madeleine de Gourcuff.
For automatically translated English captions, click “Watch on YouTube” in the video below, then follow the instructions above.
Captions in other languages
YouTube’s automatic caption translation also offers languages beyond those in the shrine’s page-translation menu. By opening the videos directly on YouTube, I have displayed captions in English, Filipino, Portuguese, and Croatian. You may also select other languages from YouTube’s Auto-translate menu.
A note on these resources
I have not yet watched all these presentations. Instead of offering a review of each one, I am sharing the collections because of their subjects, contributors, and connection with the shrine at Alençon.