Faith in History / Sean Gallagher

Mother Theodore Guérin lived a life of holiness in Indiana

During this year of the United States celebrating the 250th anniversary of its founding, we continue to learn about the lives of American saints. This month, we turn to Indiana’s first saint, St. Mother Theodore Guérin.

She was born in 1798 in Brittany in northwestern France. The Church in Indiana traces much of its early roots back to that region. The state’s first bishop, the Servant of God Bishop Simon Bruté, was born there, as was Father Benjamin Petit, a missionary among the Potawatomi in northern Indiana who was ordained by Bishop Bruté in 1837.

From a young age, young Anne-Thérèse Guérin had a deep desire to dedicate herself entirely to God. As a teenager, though, God called her to give herself to him through the extraordinary care she needed to give her family.

Her father, a French naval officer, was murdered by bandits when she was 15. Her parents had already lost two young children. So, when her father died, Anne-Thérèse’s mother fell into a deep depression, forcing the teenager to care for her mother and sister. This later led her to work in a factory to support her family.

It was only when Anne-Thérèse was 25 that she was finally able to follow her calling and became a member of the Sisters of Providence of Ruille-sur-Loire, receiving the religious name Theodore and professing perpetual vows in 1831.

Sister Theodore excelled as an educator, being honored for her ministry by the French government. In 1839, the new leader of the Diocese of Vincennes, Bishop Celestine de la Halandière, also from Brittany, asked the Sisters of Providence to send some of its members as missionaries to Indiana.

The superior selected six sisters for the mission, with the group’s superior being Sister Theodore, who took much time in prayerful discernment before accepting.

They departed France on July 15, 1840. After a two-month voyage across the Atlantic Ocean and a journey by steamboat and stagecoach, they finally reached the village of St. Mary-of-the-Woods in western Indiana on Oct. 22.

They soon became an independent religious community, the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods. Sister Theodore then became known as Mother Theodore, the name that has been beloved of Catholics across the state and beyond ever since.

Despite the deprivations that Mother Theodore and her fledgling community experienced on the Indiana frontier, they founded Catholic schools, orphanages and pharmacies for the poor across the state before the end of the 1840s.

The challenges that Mother Theodore experienced weren’t simply physical. They were also social and ecclesiastical. Anti-Catholicism was a growing phenomenon in America during her time in Indiana. And a strained relationship with Bishop Halandière also made leading her congregation difficult until his early resignation at the age of 49 in 1847.

Mother Theodore also had significant digestive struggles during most of her life as a religious, requiring her to live on a simple, bland diet during those years.

Through it all, Mother Theodore was a model of deep faith in the care of God’s providence, the belief that stood at the heart of her religious community.

Mother Theodore died on May 14, 1856, at the age of 57. Her cause for beatification and canonization was opened in 1907.

St. John Paul II declared her blessed on Oct. 25, 1998. Pope Benedict XVI declared her as Indiana’s first saint on Oct. 15, 2006. Her feast is celebrated on Oct. 3.

After she was declared a saint, Mother Theodore was named a co-patron saint of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, along with its original patron, St. Francis Xavier.

St. Mother Theodore Guérin, pray for us. †