Love Conquers All

The Heroic Hidden Life of Elisabeth Leseur

By: Ann Bottenhorn

Outside, gray clouds scudded damply across the spring sky. Inside, a continuous procession passed by the woman's bedside. "People came to pray near her, to bring her a last token of affection," her husband recalled years later. "I thus saw in my home numbers of people whom I did not know, whom I had never seen before, and who gave free vent to their sincere and touching grief." So many attended her funeral, expressing such emotion, that the clergy present asked in utter astonishment, "Who was this woman?"

She was Elisabeth Arrighi Leseur, born and raised in Paris in the second half of the nineteenth century. She died just forty-eight years later, on the eve of World War I.

Elisabeth came from a middle-class family, Catholic and wealthy. She was intelligent and well educated, her mind quick and discerning. She knew Latin, English, and Russian, and was beginning to master Italian toward the end of her life. She was attractive, with wavy dark brown hair, high cheekbones, and eyes that shone with gaiety and warmth. But none of this explains what it was that drew such crowds to Elisabeth’s funeral, let alone why, in 1934, the cause for her canonization was introduced. Indeed, the secret of Elisabeth’s appeal and holiness lies in the interior drama that began unfolding shortly after her marriage.

Saved by the Spirit. Elisabeth…

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