Saint Théodore Guérin

Anne-Thérèse Guérin was born on October 2, 1798, at Etables, which the Sisters of Providence place on the coast of Brittany as Etables-sur-Mer. ²⁶ Her father, Laurent, served in Napoleon's navy and was away for years at a time; her mother, Isabelle, taught her at home, and the Holy See biography says those lessons centered on religion and Scripture. ² She was allowed to make her First Communion at 10 and told the parish priest then that she would one day be a nun. ²

Her congregation's account of the family is a hard one. Two of her brothers died in fires at home, one when she was two and the other when she was fifteen. ⁵ In that same year her father was murdered by bandits on his way home. ²⁴⁵ The Sisters of Providence say her mother was so overcome by grief that she could not manage daily life, and that Anne-Thérèse, at fifteen, ran the house, taught her younger sister, kept the garden, and later took in sewing and factory work to support them. ⁵

She began asking to enter religious life at 20, and her mother refused for five more years. ⁵ The congregation preserves what her mother finally said: "My daughter, you may leave now; you have your mother's consent and her blessing. I can no longer refuse God the sacrifice that he asks of me." ⁵

She entered the Sisters of Providence at Ruillé-sur-Loir on August 18, 1823, a young community that taught children and cared for the poor and sick, and took the name Sister St. Theodore. ²⁵⁶ During her novitiate she became gravely ill. The Holy See biography says the remedies cured her but damaged her digestion, so that for the rest of her life she could take only soft, bland food and liquids. ² Franciscan Media says it did not keep her from becoming an accomplished teacher. ⁴

In 1826 she was made superior of a school in a poor district of Rennes where, by her congregation's account, the sisters had been failing for four years. ⁵ Her assistant and first biographer, Sister Mary Cecilia Bailly, recorded how she won them: when the girls mocked her, she waited them out, broke the switch kept for punishment, and promised rewards instead. ⁵ The Sisters of Providence sum up her method in her own phrase, "Love the children first, and then teach them." ⁵

In 1834, after a misunderstanding inside the congregation, she was moved to a country school at Soulaines. ⁵ There she studied medicine under a local doctor so that she could care for the sick, and in 1839 the Academy of Angers gave her a medal for excellence in teaching. ⁵

In 1839, Benedict XVI said, "she was asked by her Superiors to travel to the United States to become the head of a new community in Indiana." ¹ The bishop of Vincennes had asked for sisters. ⁴⁵ The Holy See biography says she could not imagine she was suitable, given her health, and accepted after hours of prayer only because she feared that otherwise no one would go. ² Her congregation adds that she had not volunteered, and that her superior told her no sisters would go if she did not lead them. ⁵

She and her five companions left in July 1840 and, after nearly three months of travel, reached Saint Mary-of-the-Woods on the evening of October 22. ²⁵⁶ What they found was a log-cabin chapel in the forest, and Benedict XVI recalled that "they knelt down before the Blessed Sacrament and gave thanks, asking God's guidance upon the new foundation." ¹ Her own journal, as the Sisters of Providence quote it, records the surprise: "What was our astonishment to find ourselves still in the midst of the forest, no village, not even a house in sight." ⁵

She had been sent to establish a motherhouse and novitiate, and Franciscan Media says she only later learned that her French superiors had already decided the sisters in America would form a new congregation under her. ⁴

The academy at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods opened on July 4, 1841, less than a year after they arrived, and it continues as Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College. ²⁵⁶ Schools at Jasper, Indiana, and St. Francisville, Illinois, followed in 1842. ² Her congregation lists a dozen more schools, two orphanages at Vincennes, and pharmacies giving free remedies to the poor. ⁶ Benedict XVI said that by her death "the Sisters were running schools and orphanages throughout the State of Indiana." ¹

The Holy See biography lists the trials without detail: prejudice against Catholics and women religious, betrayals, misunderstandings, the separation from Ruillé, a fire that destroyed a harvest, and repeated illness. ² The Sisters of Providence call her relationship with Bishop de la Hailandière of Vincennes her greatest cross, and say each respected the other. ⁵ She wrote that he "has one of those temperaments which makes martyrs of their possessors and still more of those who must put up with them from time to time.... He is jealous of his authority and wishes to do everything himself." ⁵

Part of the quarrel, in her congregation's telling, was about who governed the sisters. She objected to his plan to have each school depend on its priest for its needs, writing that "it would keep our sisters in a species of slavery." ⁵ While she was in France raising money in 1843, they say, he closed a school, admitted novices to vows and called for the election of a new superior; the sisters reelected her. ⁵ Later, they say, he confined her in a room for a day and then excommunicated her and barred her from contact with her sisters, who prepared to follow her out of the state, until word came that the pope had accepted the bishop's resignation. ⁵ The papal homilies name none of this; John Paul II spoke of "initial difficulties and misunderstandings, and subsequent crosses and afflictions." ³

She died at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods on May 14, 1856, sixteen years after she arrived. ²⁵ A Cincinnati Catholic paper, quoted by her congregation, wrote that she had "governed the community of which she was the superior from its commencement, to the time of her death, a period of nearly sixteen years." ⁵ John Paul II beatified her on October 25, 1998, saying her life was "a testimony that everything is possible with God and for God." ³⁶ Benedict XVI canonized her in Rome on October 15, 2006. ¹⁶

Her name varies: the Holy See writes Théodore, Franciscan Media Theodora, and her congregation, which counts her the eighth American saint, calls her Saint Mother Theodore Guerin. ¹⁴⁵

None of the sources consulted for this profile names a patronage for her, so this page does not claim one. ¹²⁴⁶ Her life was spent teaching, and Benedict XVI said her inner strength moved her "to address particular attention to the poor, and above all to children." ¹ That is his description of her work, not a formal patronage, and it is given here as what it is.

Her feast is October 3. Franciscan Media keeps her as its Saint of the Day on that date, and the Sisters of Providence give October 3 as her feast. ⁴⁶ In 2010 the diocesan newspaper of Fort Wayne-South Bend reported that Rome had approved inscribing her feast in that diocese's proper calendar as an obligatory memorial on October 3, "the date established by Rome at her canonization in 2006." ⁷

She is not on the national calendar. The same article said she was in neither the universal nor the United States calendar, and the bishops' proper calendar for the dioceses of the United States still does not list her. ⁷⁸ Where her day is kept depends on the diocese. She died on May 14, 1856, and that is her death date, not her feast. ²

She did not want to go. The Holy See biography says she thought herself unsuitable and accepted the mission because she feared no one else would go, and her congregation says she had not volunteered. ²⁵ What the sources describe afterward is a frail woman with a ruined digestion running a frontier community for sixteen years, and they do not pretend she was well for any of it. ²⁵

"If ever this poor little Community becomes settled," she wrote, "it will be established on the Cross; and that is what gives me confidence and makes me hope, sometimes even against hope." ² Franciscan Media quotes her advice to her sisters: "The way is not yet clear. Grope along slowly. Do not press matters; be patient, be trustful." ⁴

John Paul II and Benedict XVI both name her trust in Providence. ¹³ In her congregation's account that trust sat alongside a refusal to give way: she held firm against her bishop on how the sisters were to be governed, kept treating him with respect while she did, and for it was excommunicated and cut off from her own sisters. ⁵ The quarrel ended with his resignation rather than with any reconciliation the sources record. ⁵

The Holy See and Franciscan Media both preserve one question of hers: "With Jesus, what shall we have to fear?" ²⁴ The Holy See biography sets it in that first winter, in a farmhouse rattled by the north wind, where the sisters were often cold and hungry and had turned a porch into a chapel. ²