2023-12-30 10:00:10
The baptismal certificate of French singer Edith Piaf is exhibited during a ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary of her death, on October 10, 2013, at the Saint-Jean-Baptiste church in Belleville, in Paris. LIONEL BONAVENTURE / AFP
“In heaven, I will find Thérèse again. » A few days before her death, in 1963, Edith Piaf would have said these words to those around her. “Therese”, it is Thérèse de Lisieux (1873-1897). All her life, the singer had an intense devotion to her. This piety was born from a miracle. At least Edith Piaf was always convinced that this was indeed what it was about.
As a child, Edith Giovanna Gassion – her birth name –, born in 1915 into a poor family neglected by an alcoholic mother, suffered from serious vision problems, probably due to an inflammation of the cornea called keratitis, linked to a lack of care and hygiene. Her paternal grandmother, who took her in in 1917, then wanted to try everything to cure her granddaughter.
The “miracle” and the prostitutes
Louise-Léontine Gassion has a unique profile: owner of a brothel, she is also a fervent Christian. Established in Bernay (Eure), in Normandy, about thirty kilometers from Lisieux, she hears a lot about a certain “Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus”, who died two decades earlier, to whom miracles are already attributed. Louise-Léontine convinces herself that her granddaughter can benefit from her healing power.
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The rest of the story is known to us through various testimonies and interviews with the singer, recounted in various biographies, including the recent work Piaf. A cry to God (Salvator, 2023), by the Catholic writer Pierre Fesquet.
On the morning of August 19, 1921, taking her in the company of all her “daughters,” the madam grandmother would have taken the lead on a surprising pilgrimage to Lisieux. After hearing mass at the cathedral, the troop of prostitutes and young Edith then headed towards the Carmel cemetery.
There, according to the stories, they kneel in front of Thérèse’s tomb, without a tombstone, only covered with earth. In the middle of her prayers, Louise-Léontine takes a handful, which she slips into her bag. Back in Bernay, she rubs Edith’s eyes with earth from the cemetery.
A few days later, Edith, then aged 5, allegedly burst into the middle of the salon, among the girls and their clients. Her eyelids would then no longer be stuck together with secretions: her eyes are wide open, she sees! For the young child, as for her grandmother, there is no doubt: it was Thérèse who restored her sight.
Whatever one thinks of this story – for some biographers, Edith Gassion was still suffering from eye disease when she was 8 years old, others argue that she had never really lost her sight, still others that her recovery was linked to wearing a black bandage for a week after her pilgrimage – it is certain that it had a considerable influence for the future singer.
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