The mysterious Marthe Robin... The legend claims that this Frenchwoman spent her life bedridden in the shadows of her family's farmhouse, unable to move, subsisting only on a weekly communion wafer, and experiencing intense mystical ecstasies every Friday, her body marked by the stigmata of Christ. Yet, she found the strength, supported by her spiritual director, Father Georges Finet, to found the Foyers de Charité in 1936, an institution that would spread internationally. In stark contrast, the "investigative" monk Conrad De Meester, argued in his 2020 book, La Fraude mystique de Marthe Robin ("The Mystical Fraud of Marthe Robin"), that almost every aspect of her life was a "lie."

Many essays followed the Belgian Carmelite's publication. Among them was the controversial Marthe Robin ou le secret de famille ("Marthe Robin and the Family Secret") published in 2024 by Elisabeth Chevassus. After delving into writings about the woman from Châteauneuf-de-Galaure, this general practitioner put forward a bold hypothesis: pushed by the bishop of Valence to undergo medical examinations to substantiate the supernatural phenomena she claimed to experience, Robin ended her own life in 1981 at age 78, afraid of being exposed. Chevassus also asserts that Robin used and abused aspirin and morphine to alleviate her pain, and that a family taboo lay at the root of her distress.

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