170th anniversary of the arrival of the Sisters of Providence in Chile

This year marks the anniversary of the arrival of the Sisters of Providence in Chile. It was 170 years ago that five women religious , Victoria Larocque as superior, Sister Amable Dorion, Sister Marie du Sacré-Cœur Bérard, Sister Denise-Benjamin Worwoth and Sister Bernarda Morin left Montreal to settle in western United States. But there was an unexpected turn of events: Providence had some different plans for each one of them.

As celebrations in Chile are currently unfolding, a newspaper interview published in 1927 on the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio was retrieved by the Bernarda Morin’s Office of the Cause. There, Mother Bernarda explains how Chile became her “second homeland”. Below we reproduce, in her own words, the circumstances that led her to her first destination in that country, the port of Valparaiso: *

The same year of my profession, Bishop Bourget of Montreal, received Bishop Blanchet from the Diocese of Nesqualy in Oregon. He was looking for some of the Sisters of Providence who could join the diocese. So, five of us were appointed to go him.

Here I must refer to a most strange event: Someone had brought maps so we could study our route. Before putting one particular map aside, the person who had brought them was staring carefully at the American Continent. Pointing on it somewhere in the South, he asked us, as if wanting to make conversation: “Over there is Chile. Would you like to go to Chile, Sister Bernarda?” “No, sir,” I replied, “I do not intend to go any further than obedience demands from me”. Little did I know that Chile would become both the land where I will serve and my second homeland.

On November 17, after an extremely arduous journey, we arrived in San Francisco, California. After resting there for some days, we continued to Oregon where we stayed for two months, hosted at some other religious women’s residency. These two months were very hard for us. Our hosts were very poor, and we lacked any resources. If you add to that situation our disappointment when we realized we would not be able to fulfill the mission “entrusted to us”, you can understand our uneasiness about our future in Oregon… We had neither money, nor clothes, nor provisions… We who had been sent to practice charity, were forced to live on it. What made things more difficult, was that three of the us were barely in our twenties and none could speak English properly. For these reasons, our superiors urged us to return to Canada.

After embarking and after a terrible and monotonous sailing of 83 days, during which we not only had to endure the fury of the elements, but also that of men (the captain of the ship and his second were two cruel human beings) we arrived on June 17, 1853, in Valparaíso. And that was my arrival to Chile in a nutshell.

*To read the full article (in Spanish) click on the link: https://hermanasdelaprovidencia.cl/el-ocaso-de-una-noble-vida/