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Biography

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Bernarda Morin was born Marie-Bernarde Morin on 29 December 1832 in the parish of Saint-Henri-de-Lévis in Lower Canada, in the region of present-day Quebec. She was the daughter of François Morin and Victoire Roy and was raised in a French-Canadian Catholic household along the St. Lawrence. In 1850 she entered the novitiate of the Sisters of Providence in Montreal, a congregation founded in 1843 by Émilie Tavernier Gamelin to serve the poor, the sick, and orphans. She received the religious name Sister Bernarda and made her profession in Montreal in the early 1850s. Shortly afterward she was assigned to a new mission in South America.

In 1853 Archbishop Rafael Valentín Valdivieso of Santiago requested sisters from Canada to establish charitable works in Chile. A group of five Sisters of Providence, among them Sister Bernarda, then about twenty years old, left Montreal and after a long sea voyage landed at Valparaíso in June 1853 before continuing to Santiago. The sisters opened a house of Providence and began to care for the sick, abandoned children, and the destitute. They faced the challenges of a foreign language, a different climate, and limited material resources. Sister Bernarda remained in Chile for the rest of her life and became the central figure in the development of the community there.

As local vocations increased, the sisters extended their apostolate to hospitals, orphanages, schools, and homes for the elderly in Santiago and in other parts of Chile. In the later nineteenth century the Chilean houses were established as an autonomous congregation, the Congregation of the Sisters of Providence of Chile, independent of the Montreal motherhouse. Mother Bernarda served as foundress and long-time superior general, directing the formation of sisters, the writing of constitutions, and the opening of new foundations. Under her leadership the congregation became an important female religious institute in the Chilean Catholic Church, devoted to education and the works of mercy among the poor.

Mother Bernarda spent more than seventy-five years in Chile. She died in Santiago on 4 October 1929 at the age of ninety-six. She is remembered by her congregation as its foundress and as a model of perseverance in religious life. The Sisters of Providence of Chile continued their charitable and educational work after her death. She has not been beatified or canonized by the Catholic Church, and no universal feast day has been assigned to her.

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