Edna Rose Ritchings

Who is Edna Rose Ritchings?

Edna Rose Ritchings is the symbolic maintainer of the International Peace Mission movement. She is also known as Sweet Angel in the movement, or as Mrs. S. A. Divine or Mother Divine because she is the widow of the movement's leader, Father Divine. She assisted Father Divine, who claimed to be God, in his declining years. She and her husband lived in a manor home,which doubled as a Peace Mission headquarters and church known as the Woodmont manor & estate from 1953. It is located at Gladwyne, Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia suburb. Father Divine died in 1965 and was later interred in a crypt and mausoleum on the premises. The Woodmont estate continues to be the home of Mrs. Divine.

A Canadian convert from Vancouver, Ritchings was drawn to the movement in its decline in the early 1940s while she was still in high school. As did many adherents of Father Divine, she broke ties with her parents, and adopted a new name, "Sweet Angel". Moving to the then-headquarters of the movement in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she became one of Father Divine's personal secretaries. She proposed to him one day in the office by saying, "I want to marry you because I know you are God."