Departure of Mother Bernarda and 4 companions to Oregon, in 1852.

This year has marked the occasion to celebrate and talk about the arrival of Mother Victoire Larocque, and sisters Amable Dorion, Mary of the Sacred Heart Bérard, Denis Benjamin Worworth and a very young Bernarda Morin, to the port of Valparaiso on June 17, 1853, on a historic day for the Sisters of Providence. But the story of how those five missionaries left Montreal originally for Oregon, in the United States, began a year earlier, on October 18, 1852.

Just a few months after her profession, Sister Bernarda offered to mission in the American West. Her parents were reluctant. Their daughter had just turned nineteen years old, and the journey was long and arduous. But thanks to her commitment to her vocation, Sister Bernarda convinced them to accept.

Some days before the departure, the five sisters met to complete preparations. With her five companions, Sister Bernarda was ready for an expedition full of dangers, equipped with obedience and love. As they were studying the route to Oregon, Father Alexis Frederik Truteau spotted a remote territory and read aloud the name written on the map: Chile. Then he asked Sister Bernarda if she would be willing to go there. Her destiny was enclosed in her reply: “I do not wish to go anyplace but where obedience calls me.”

When answering this apparently accidental question, Mother Bernarda could hardly have anticipated the prophetic manifestation of Providence through which she would not only be sent to Chile but also become the foundress of many works that still to this day serve the neediest people in that country, one that is no longer remote, but beloved to our Congregation.

Source: Sister Bernard Would you like to go to Chile?, Collection Providence, vol. 12.