EVANSVILLE, Ind.,-
The remains of 19th-century Roman Catholic nun, who Pope Benedict XVI plans to canonize this month, will be moved to a temporary shrine above ground just outside Terre Haute from grave in the floor of a nearby church.
The Vatican requested that Mother Theodore Guerin’s body be made accessible to the faithful, said Sister Denise Wilkinson, general superior of the Sisters of Providence.
“That’s why we’re doing it, so that people have a special place to come,” Wilkinson said.
The French nun left her homeland in 1840 for the American frontier. Within a year of her arrival in Indiana, she founded an academy for girls that grew into the current St. Mary-of-the Woods College. She died in 1856 at age 57.
Guerin’s remains have been moved at least six times since she died, community officials said.
Most recently her remains were entombed in the floor of the Church of the Immaculate Conception on the school’s campus.
The Oct. 15 ceremony in Vatican City will end a nearly 100-year effort to establish her sainthood.
The Sisters of Providence announced this year that the Vatican had approved a miracle–the regaining of eyesight by an employee at the mother house–attributed to Guerin’s intercession.
Her sainthood will bring to eight the number of U.S. saints, which includes two Jesuit missionaries who were killed by Mohawk Indians.
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