Banished nun is 1st U.S. saint in 6 years

Banished nun is 1st U.S. saint in 6 years
By KEN KUSMER
Copyright by The Associated Press
October 14, 2006

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. - An Indiana nun once banished from her congregation by a bishop will be proclaimed a saint Sunday, providing a model of virtuous life to America's Roman Catholics even if they find themselves at odds with church leaders.

Pope Benedict XVI will canonize Blessed Mother Theodore Guerin, who died in 1856, as the first U.S. saint in six years.

Guerin's life story can inspire those struggling in their faith, said members of the religious order she founded, the Sisters of Providence of St. Mary-of-the-Woods.

"The bishop here in Vincennes was impossible to work with, yet she always kept her faith. She held on to it," said Sister Marcia Speth, one of the order's leaders. "In that way, she witnesses to us how to be today in an imperfect, flawed, sinful church."

Guerin led six French nuns who arrived in Indiana on Oct. 22, 1840, to establish a community in the woods outside Terre Haute. She and Bishop Celestin de la Hailandiere struggled over control, and he dismissed her from her vows, threatened her with excommunication and banished her from St. Mary-of-the-Woods.

She is like many saints who found themselves bucking church authorities while alive, only to be acclaimed as saints after their deaths, said the Rev. Richard McBrien, a theologian at the University of Notre Dame and the author of the 2001 book Lives of the Saints.

When Guerin and fellow sisters stepped off the stagecoach at St. Mary-of-the-Woods, only a simple church in a dense forest awaited them.

Guerin raised money and built an academy for girls. Billed as the oldest Roman Catholic college for women in the U.S, it's known today as St. Mary-of-the-Woods College. The sisters also founded schools across Indiana. Today the order has 465 sisters, with 10 women set to become nuns.