November 1, 2007,
to October 30, 2008
Born in Brittany as Anne-Thérèse Guérin in 1798, Mother Theodore Guerin was assigned to the diocese of Vincennes in 1840. On July 4, 1841, she directed the founding of the Academy of Saint-Mary-of-the-Woods near Terre Haute, the first Catholic women’s liberal arts college in the United States. In time, Mother Theodore and her order, The Sisters of Providence, established more than a dozen schools in Indiana and Illinois, two orphanages, and two pharmacies where medicines were dispensed free to the poor. The Sisters of Providence eventually extended their ministry into several states, were the first American women’s congregation to start a mission in China and continue to focus on issues such as education, child-care, adult literacy, anti-racism, poverty, and violence.
In 1998, Pope John Paul II beatified Mother Theodore Guerin, signifying that she is a holy woman worthy of honor and veneration. Blessed Mother Theodore Guerin was recognized as America’s eighth Catholic Saint by Pope Benedict XVI on October 15, 2006, in a canonization ceremony in Rome.
In honor of this ceremony, the Indiana State Museum has included artifacts on loan from the Sisters of Providence archives in the museum’s second floor core gallery, The Hoosier Way. Among the items on display are a chaplet, or rosary that hung at Mother Guerin's side (above), and a Book of Psalms (below), opened to the passage Mother Theodore Guerin read during a frightful storm at sea on her return trip from Europe in 1844.
Organized religion played a significant role in shaping the Hoosier character during the pioneer period. The Indiana State Museum has long presented the contributions of Quakers, Methodist circuit-riders and Presbyterian abolitionists like Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. It is pleased to help relate the role that Catholicism, and one extraordinary Catholic in particular, played in this story.
These items went on public display on November 1, 2007. They will remain on display at the museum through October 30, 2008. To learn more about the Sisters of Providence, visit http://www.sistersofprovidence.org/.