New reveal: Pope Leo shares that his family loved St. Thérèse!
Pope Leo XIV visited the Parish of Saint Thérèse in Juanicó, Uruguay, as he concluded his time in the country during an 11-day South American tour. The parish was the first dedicated to St. Thérèse after her canonization in 1925. The visit fell on the anniversary of the death of Leo’s father, Louis Prevost, who died on November 8, 1997. Leo has spoken of the Prevost family’s devotion to St. Thérèse, including writing to couples about the example of her canonized parents.
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Pope Leo XIV visited a parish dedicated to St. Thérèse in Juanicó, Uruguay, on November 8, the anniversary of his father’s death. The visit highlighted the Prevost family’s devotion to the French saint, which Leo has also publicly encouraged families to emulate. 1
During his South America tour, Leo stopped at the Parish of Saint Thérèse in Juanicó before going to celebrate Mass at the Shrine of Our Lady of the 33. The parish was the first dedicated to St. Thérèse after her canonization in 1925. 1
The article notes that the visit fell on the anniversary of the death of Leo’s father, Louis Prevost, who died on November 8, 1997. It says the Pope did not mention the anniversary during the visit. 1
Leo’s father had French ancestry, served among the soldiers who landed at Normandy on D-Day, and later spent time in France. The article describes the family’s devotion to St. Thérèse as a tradition Leo has continued. 1
On St. Thérèse’s feast day in 2025, the first after his election, Leo wrote to couples and pointed to her parents—also canonized—as models for family life. 1*
The role of family devotion in cultivating Christian holiness
Family devotion helps cultivate Christian holiness by making faith a lived part of ordinary life: prayer at home teaches children to turn to God, binds family life to the worship of the Church, and encourages the virtues through daily example. Its value is not that a particular routine guarantees holiness, but that a household can become a setting where family members learn, with God’s grace, to love and serve him and one another.
The family is not a replacement for the parish or the Church’s public worship. It is a community whose prayer belongs within the wider life of the Church. Pope John Paul II describes family prayer as an introduction to the Church’s liturgical prayer and as a way of carrying that worship into personal, family, and social life:
An important purpose of the prayer of the domestic Church is to serve as the natural introduction for the children to the liturgical prayer of the whole Church, both in the sense of preparing for it and of extending it into personal, family and social life.
This relationship matters: prayer at home helps prepare a family to worship together, especially at Sunday Mass, and gives the faith a place in the rest of the week. The family’s shared participation in the Eucharist and the sacraments is therefore not a separate devotion alongside household prayer, but a central part of its spiritual life. John Paul II calls the Eucharist the source of the family’s spiritual growth and vitality.
Calling the family a “domestic Church” also highlights its mission. A family is meant to be a place where faith is received, practiced, and handed on—not just discussed. A papal address describes the family as a school of virtue and a natural setting in which Christians mature in faith, discern their vocation, and grow in holiness.
Children often first learn how to relate to God by seeing how their parents do so. St Josemaría Escrivá emphasizes that family prayer teaches children to put God first and to approach him as Father; it communicates faith not merely through instruction but through the parents’ own life of prayer.
This is why modest, regular practices can be formative. Grace before meals, morning or evening prayer, reading Scripture, and praying the Rosary are among the practices commended for family life. They give faith a recurring place in the household’s ordinary rhythms. A brief prayer before a meal, for example, can express gratitude and acknowledge dependence on God; evening prayer can help family members entrust the day to him.
The point is not to impose an identical routine on every household. The Church’s teaching allows for different forms of private prayer suited to a family’s members and circumstances, while stressing respect for the freedom of children. A sustainable habit offered with warmth is more likely to nurture faith than a practice treated as a test of religious performance. Escrivá similarly recommends simple, natural practices that a family can do together.
Family prayer is not meant to be an isolated “religious” compartment. The source in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis stresses that Christian life should not be split into a spiritual life on one side and family, work, relationships, and social responsibilities on the other. It identifies charity—the love of God and neighbor—as the dynamic root that unites them.
That insight gives family devotion its practical measure. Prayer should help family members become more truthful, patient, forgiving, generous, and attentive to one another. It does not make a household holy simply by being recited; it should dispose its members to live the faith in their relationships and responsibilities. If prayer becomes detached from conduct, its purpose has been misunderstood. Conversely, acts of care, reconciliation, and service can express a faith that is being nourished by prayer.
Parents have a particular responsibility in this formation. John Paul II tells parents to accompany their children on the path of holiness and to make the effort to be holy themselves. He links that task especially to a life marked by prayer. Parents are therefore not asked to present themselves as flawless, but their example matters: children can see both what it means to seek God and what it means to return to him after failure.
Family devotion is not a promise that family life will be free of conflict, grief, or hardship. Pope John XXIII’s account of St Bertilla’s family expressly acknowledges sorrow and discouragement, while describing faith and prayer as sustaining a Christian response through trial. Prayer can help a family face difficulties in hope, but the available sources do not suggest that hardship will always be removed or that a family’s struggles prove a failure of devotion.
Nor does the goal of holiness mean that every family member must follow the same vocation or spiritual path. The family is described as a place where a person can mature in faith and discover a vocation. Its task is to foster an environment in which each person can respond to God, not to predetermine that response. The Church’s encouragement of family practices is also to be lived with respect for children’s freedom.
A sound approach is simple and integrated: pray together in a way suited to the household; participate in Sunday Mass and the sacraments; make room for Scripture or a suitable spiritual reading; and let prayer lead into concrete love and service. The lives of the saints can be one resource for family reading, since they show people seeking holiness in varied circumstances and make clear that holiness involves cooperation with God’s grace.
Family devotion cultivates holiness, then, not by making home life perfect or mechanically religious, but by helping its members seek God together and carry faith into ordinary decisions. Its fruit is a household increasingly formed by prayer, united with the Church’s worship, and shaped by charity.