Founding Mothers
Beginnings
The Network of Sacred Heart Schools finds its origin in the vision of St. Madeleine Sophie Barat. She considered the service of education as the primary means by which the Society would carry on its mission of communicating the love of the Heart of Jesus.
The Network has evolved from the first Sacred Heart school founded by Sophie in Amiens, France in 1801 to the founding of the Academy of the Sacred Heart in St. Charles in 1818 by Philippine.
Together with Janet Urskine Stuart RSCJ and Mary Ann Aloysia Hardey, these women had a profound impact on education.
Stuart became a Catholic at the age of twenty-one and entered the Society of the Sacred Heart in 1882. She is known for her spiritual writings that continue to inspire us today.
Hardey was a central figure in the expansion of the Society of the Sacred Heart in North America. She entered the Society of the Sacred Heart in Louisiana and was part of the first school and convent of the Society in New York.
St. Philippine Duchesne
Rose Philippine Duchesne was born in Grenoble, France, in 1769. In 1804, she entered the new Society of the Sacred Heart, led by Madeleine Sophie Barat. Her missionary dreams led her to the New World in May 1818. In 1841, her dreams came to fruition when she was part of a band of four religious in the Potawatomi mission at Sugar Creek, Kansas. She spent her last ten years in the foundation she had begun in St. Charles, Missouri, where she died in 1852.
Mary Ann Aloysia Hardey
Mary Ann Aloysia Hardey is a central figure in the expansion of the Society of the Sacred Heart in North America. She entered the Society of the Sacred Heart in Louisiana, but in 1842, she was part of the first school and convent of the Society in New York. Placed in charge of all the houses in eastern North America, she opened sixteen houses of the Sacred Heart from Canada to Cuba and throughout the eastern United States. In 1871, she became an assistant general for the international Society of the Sacred Heart based in Paris, where she died in 1886.
St. Madeleine Sophie Barat
Saint Madeleine Sophie Barat founded the Society of the Sacred Heart in France on November 21, 1800. Born in Joigny, France, the daughter of a wine cooper, Madeleine Sophie Barat was educated beyond the norms of her contemporaries and well-suited for leadership of a religious community dedicated to prayer and education. In Paris, on November 21, 1800, at the age of twenty, she and three other young women consecrated themselves to “make known the revelation of God’s love.” Centered in personal and communal prayer, they set out to give young women a classical education -- not common in their day -- and to offer religious studies and practical skills. They began to call themselves the Society of the Sacred Heart.
Janet Erskine Stuart, RSCJ
No one can be educated by maxim and precept; it is the life lived,
and the things loved and the ideals believed in,
by which we tell, one upon another.
Janet Erskine Stuart was born to a devout Anglican family in 1857 in Cottesmore, England. Her religious quest led her to become a Catholic at the age of twenty-one and to enter the Society of the Sacred Heart in 1882. She was quickly placed in positions of leadership, as mistress of novices, superior, and superior vicar of England. In 1911 she became superior general of the Society, undertook to visit all the houses of the Society around the world, and died at Roehampton, London, in 1914 at the age of fifty-seven, as the First World War was breaking out.
Her influence continues today through her many writings and insights on education and the spiritual life. One of her poems set to music, Spirit Seeking, is still sung by Sacred Heart students around the world.