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Mother Theodore Guerin: Indiana's Very Own Saint - November 2006 Issue of St. Antho... Page 2 of 8
was no one.
None of the sisters could speak English and they had no idea how to get to Indiana. A doctor who boarded the ship with customs officials took pity on them and contacted the bishop of New York about their plight.
The next day they were taken to Brooklyn where they stayed with a woman accustomed to caring for missionaries. A man who spoke French accompanied them to Philadelphia, where they stayed with the Sisters of Charity. There they accompanied a French priest who was going to Vincennes.
They traveled by train, stagecoach and steamboat and finally reached Madison, Indiana. There they met Bishop Celestine de la Hailandiere, who told them that they were to be settled on land northwest of Terre Haute.
Another steamboat took them to Evansville, Indiana, and then a stagecoach to
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who accompanied them the rest of the way:'
Four postulants (candidates) were waiting for the sisters when they arrived. The sisters began studying English, and Mother Theodore started to instruct the postulants in the way of religious life.
Thus began the community of the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods.
? Family Ties
Mother Theodore was born Anne-Therese Guerin in the village of Etables in Brittany, France, on October 2, 1798, as the French Revolution was drawing to a close. She was the second child and first daughter of Laurent and Isabelle Lefevre Guerin.
Two more children would be bom to the family but two of them?the firstborn son and the fourth child, also a son?died very young. Anne-Therese and her younger sister, Marie-Jeanne, survived.
Laurent was an officer in the French Navy and was away from home most of the time, leaving Isabelle to care for the children. Since it was dangerous in those days to practice their religion openly, Isabelle taught her daughters reading and catechism at home. Anne-Therese, however, attended a small school in Etables for a short time and was taught by a former seminarian who lived with the Guerin family for several months.
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She became a devout young girl and her spiritual development was so sufficient that she was permitted to receive her First Communion when she was 10?two years earlier than normal in those days.
When Anne-Therese was 15, her father was murdered. This was more than Isabelle could take. The intensity of her grief incapacitated her so much that her eldest daughter had to assume the responsibility of caring for herself and for Marie-Jeanne. In time, Anne-Therese worked as a seamstress to support the family.
When she was 20, Anne-Therese asked her mother for permission to join a religious order. Isabelle refused. She could not lose her daughter, tooMt was another five years before Isabelle recovered from her grief enough to give her daughter permission to follow her vocation.
Anne-Therese chose the Sisters of Providence, a new order in France founded by Father Jacques-Francois Dujarie. The French Revolution was over, but few
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7/23/2007