St. Mother Theodore Guerin

Month of Saints - Day 5

Today's Saint is for Aunt Ginny and my Indiana cousins.

St. Mother Theodore Guerin was the foundress of the Sisters of Providence of St. Mary-of-the-Woods in Indiana.  She was born during the French Revolution and baptized Anne-Therese.  Most of her Catholic elementary education was done at home as the revolution had forced churches and schools to close. She was allowed to receive her First Communion at the age of 10, which was two years earlier than was customary at the time.  On the day of her First Communion, she confided to the priest that it was her desire to enter religious life.

Anne-Therese's father died when she was 15, leaving her mother in a deep depression.  Anne-Therese accepted the responsibility of caring for her mother and younger sister as well as the family home and garden.  It wasn't until she was 25 that she was able to fulfill her desire to join the Sisters of Providence of Ruille-sur-Loir. When she pronounced her vows and received her habit, she was given the name Sister St. Theodore.

In 1839, the first Bishop of the Diocese of Vincennes, IN, sent one of his priests to France to recruit sisters to work in the American frontier. Sister Theodore, two other professed sisters and two novices accepted the assignment. They sailed to New York City, traveled by train through Philadelphia to Frederick, MD, where they transferred to a stagecoach, which carried them through the Cumberland Pass to Wheeling. At the Ohio River, they caught a steamboat to Madison, IN, then another boat to Evansville. The sisters continued by stagecoach to Terre Haute, crossed the Wabash River by ferry and arrived at their wilderness destination of St. Mary-of-the-Woods on Oct. 22, 1840. Within a few years,  the sisters had opened schools in St. Mary-of-the-Woods, Jasper, Terre Haute and Ft. Wayne Indiana and St. Francisville, IL.

Despite tribulations, Mother Guerin's congregation grew rapidly during the 16 years of her service in the U.S. She dies in 1856 and was canonized in 2006.  Her feast day is Oct 6.