Published: October 15, 2006 12:53 pm      

Know your American Saints

A glance at Mother Theodore Guerin, who will be canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday:

BORN: Anne-Therese Guerin, Oct. 2, 1798, in the village of Etables in Brittany, France.

VOCATION: Entered the Sisters of Providence of Ruille, France, on Aug. 18, 1823, and took perpetual vows on Sept. 5, 1831. She was initially known as Sister St. Theodore.

INDIANA MISSION: Arrived with five other Sisters of Providence at St. Mary-of-the-Woods, outside Terre Haute, on Oct. 22, 1840. On July 4, 1841, they enrolled the first student in a girls academy now known as St. Mary-of-the-Woods College.

DEATH: May 14, 1856.

FEAST DAY: Oct. 3.

FIRST MIRACLE ATTRIBUTED TO HER INTERCESSION: The 1908 healing of Sister of Providence Mary Theodosia Mug, after she had prayed at Guerin's tomb for the health of another sister. Nerves and muscles on her left side had been damaged during a mastectomy.

SECOND MIRACLE ATTRIBUTED TO HER INTERCESSION: The 2001 healing of the eyesight of Phil McCord after he prayed to her. He had been facing a cornea transplant.



Sunday's canonization of Mother Theodore Guerin by Pope Benedict XVI will be the eighth for a saint generally acknowledged as from the U.S. The other seven, by chronological order of their canonizations:



1930: Sts. Isaac Jogues (1607-1646) and Rene Goupil (1607-1642): two of the eight Jesuit North American martyrs. Goupil died at the hands of Mohawks in present-day upstate New York, and Jogues was martyred by Iroquois four years later in the same area.

1946: St. Frances Xavier Cabrini (1850-1917): missionary who came to the U.S. to help Italian immigrants and founded a religious order known today as the Cabrini Sisters; became an American citizen in 1909; first American citizen to be canonized.

1975: St. Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton (1774-1821): convert to Catholicism who founded the American Sisters of Charity; first native-born U.S. citizen to be canonized.

1977: St. John Neumann (1811-1860): native of Bohemia who became bishop of Philadelphia.

1988: St. Rose Philippine Duchesne (1769-1852): French-born nun who founded a U.S. branch of the Society of the Sacred Heart religious order in Missouri and worked among American Indians in Kansas.

2000: St. Katherine Drexel (1858-1955): Philadelphia-born heiress who spent $20 million inheritance establishing schools and missions for blacks and American Indians; founded Xavier University in New Orleans.