A Breton by birth, Anne-Therese Guerin was 25 when she entered the Sisters of Providence of Ruille-sur-Loir, France. As Sister Theodore, she directed schools in Rennes and Soulaines, where she also studied pharmacy and medicine.
Despite poor health, she led five other nuns across the Atlantic to a new mission on the American Frontier. St. Mary-of-the-Woods Academy, which they began in Indiana, is now the oldest U.S. Catholic college for women. Mother Theodore survived a harsh climate, a major fire and the hostility of the local bishop, also from France, to found the Sisters of Providence of St. Mary-of-the-Woods. Canonized in 2006, she often advised others, “Put yourself gently into the hands of Providence.”
