Overview
On 15 October 2006, Mother Theodore Guerin was canonized as Indiana’s first saint by Pope Benedict XVl and her feast day was established as the 3rd of October. Anne-Therese Guerin was born on October 2, 1798, in the village of Etables-sur-Mer in Brittany, France. In 1823, she entered the Sisters of Providence, taking the name Sister St. Theodore. At the invitation of the Bishop of Vincennes, Indiana, Sister St. Theodore and five Sisters were sent in July of 1840 to Terre Haute, now St. Mary of the Woods, Indiana, to teach and to care for the sick and poor. Less than a month after the attack on Fort Sumter, April 12, 1861, Indiana Governor Oliver P. Morton requested that the Sisters of Providence provide assistance in the administration of City Hospital in Indianapolis, which had been turned over to the Federal Government for the care of wounded and sick soldiers. The Sisters of Providence are one of several Congregations honored for their service during the Civil War. The memorial monument, called “Nuns of the Battlefield”, is located at the corner of Rhode Island Avenue and M Street in Washington, D.C. St. Mother Theodore Guerin died on May 14, 1856, and is buried near the Church of the Immaculate Conception, St. Mary of the Woods. The historical growth of the Sisters of Providence and the growth of the Sovereign Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem parallel in the same historical milieu of the 1800’s in France. And for our Knights and Dames in Indiana, Sister Mother Theodore, as she is loving addressed by her sisters, provides a role model of humanitarian and Christian service to all God’s people.
