Short answers, pulled from the story.
Teresa of Ávila was a Spanish Carmelite nun, mystic, and monastic reformer born on the 28th of March 1515. She founded seventeen convents across Spain, co-founded the Discalced Carmelites with John of the Cross, and in 1970 became the first woman named a Doctor of the Catholic Church by Pope Paul VI.
Teresa was born Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda Dávila y Ahumada to a wealthy wool merchant father in Ávila. Her paternal grandfather, Juan Sánchez de Toledo, was a converso, a Jew who converted to Christianity, and was condemned by the Spanish Inquisition before re-establishing a Catholic identity.
Teresa's three major works are her autobiography La Vida de la Santa Madre Teresa de Jesús, The Way of Perfection published in 1566, and The Interior Castle written in 1577 and published in 1588. All three are prominent texts in Christian mysticism and the theology of prayer.
The transverberation is a mystical vision Teresa described in which a seraph drove the fiery point of a golden lance repeatedly through her heart, causing simultaneous spiritual pain and overwhelming love of God. She recorded it in her autobiography, and Bernini used her account as the basis for his sculpture The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa at Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome.
Teresa was canonized by Pope Gregory XV in 1622, forty years after her death. Pope Paul VI named her a Doctor of the Church on the 27th of September 1970, making her the first woman to receive that papal distinction, alongside Catherine of Siena.
Teresa's body was found incorrupt when exhumed in 1585 and her remains were distributed across several countries. Her right foot and part of her upper jaw are in Rome, a hand is in Lisbon, her left arm and heart are in Alba de Tormes, Spain, and individual fingers are held in Paris and Sanlúcar de Barrameda. A canonical recognition conducted on the 28th of August 2024 confirmed the body appeared unchanged from when it was last examined in 1914.