St. Theodore Guérin

St. Theodore Guérin was born Anne-Thérèse Guérin on 2 October 1798 at Étables-sur-Mer in Brittany, France, and died on 14 May 1856 at Saint-Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana, in the United States. She entered the Sisters of Providence of Ruillé-sur-Loir and, though often in fragile health, proved a woman of remarkable practical wisdom and quiet courage, so that in 1840 she was sent with a small band of sisters to the wilderness of the American frontier.

There, in the forests of Indiana, she founded the Sisters of Providence of Saint-Mary-of-the-Woods and opened schools and free pharmacies for the settlers, laboring against poverty, illness, anti-Catholic hostility, and even conflict with her own bishop, all of which she bore with trust in Divine Providence. Her congregation spread across the growing nation as a great force for Catholic education. Beloved as Mother Théodore, she was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI in 2006, and her memory is kept on 3 October.