U.S. nun among 4 new saints

[tocqueville]

POSTED: 0049 GMT (0849 HKT), October 15, 2006

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- Pope Benedict XVI gave Catholics four new saints Sunday, bestowing the honor on a 19th century nun who struggled in the American frontier, a bishop who tended to the wounded during the Mexican Revolution and two Italian clergy.

French-born Mother Theodore Guerin endured harsh conditions on the American frontier and resisted the objections of a local bishop in pursuing her dream of establishing Catholic education for pioneers. She established a college for women in Indiana, which enrolled its first student in 1841.

Among those at the ceremony on the steps of St. Peter's Basilica were ailing Chicago Cardinal Francis George and five Indiana churchmen. George, who is recovering from cancer surgery, flew to Rome with hundreds of alumnae, trustees and students of St. Mary-of-the-Woods College in Indiana. (Watch as Mother Theodore Guerin is beatified -- 1:11)

After enduring a long sea and land journey, Guerin, who was born in Brittany in 1798, turned a log cabin into a chapel with five other French nuns, Benedict told the crowd. By the time of her death in 1856, her order was running schools and orphanages in Indiana, the pope noted.

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/10/15/pope.saints.ap/index.html