Marie de Souza 1850-1920
We have no official circular, neither by Lisieux nor by Saigon.
Anne du Sacré-Coeur was 38 when Thérèse arrived, and she returned to Saigon in the summer of 1895: they therefore lived together for 7 years.
Marie de Souza was born in Macao – to a Portuguese father and a Chinese mother – and at the age of 24 entered the Carmel of Saigon, founded 13 years earlier by a heroic swarm from Lisieux.
Over the years, the desire to live in a French Carmel grew in her; she was received with great happiness in Lisieux in 1883. But alas, her body never managed to pass from the blazing sun of Saigon to the climate of Lisieux.
The sisters find her witty, knowledgeable, talented, wonderfully hardworking, and charitable. She is reported to have dumped buckets of hot water into the ice-cold washhouse on winter laundry days.
All we know is that Thérèse remembered her with happiness, and made a point of saying goodbye to her in writing in the beautiful letter LT-225 May 1897.
