St. Philippine Duchesne

Biography

Rose Philippine Duchesne was born in Grenoble, France, on August 29, 1769, into a family actively involved in political and commercial life. Educated by the Visitation nuns at Sainte-Marie-d’En-Haut monastery, she was drawn to their life of contemplation. She entered the order when she was nineteen, against the wishes of her family.

The French Revolution soon forced the nuns to leave the monastery, and Philippine returned to her family. For eleven years, she risked her freedom and life by nursing prisoners, bringing priests to the faithful, and teaching and feeding poor children. At the close of the war, she gained possession of the old monastery of Sainte-Marie-d’En-Haut, opened a boarding school, and tried unsuccessfully to reassemble the Visitation community. In December 1804, she met Madeleine Sophie Barat, founder of a new community, the Society of the Sacred Heart. Philippine immediately turned over Sainte-Marie to her and entered the Society.

A deep friendship formed between these two remarkable women of such different temperaments and ten years difference in age. For twelve years, the patient wisdom of Sophie molded the ardent, steadfast Philippine into a person devoted to the glory of the Heart of Jesus. Philippine, whose greatest joy was to spend whole nights in prayer, soon felt a call to serve as a missionary. Many times, Philippine shared with Sophie her dream of bringing the Gospel to the native peoples in America, but her skills were needed at home, first in the school at Sainte-Marie, and from 1815 as the Society’s secretary general in Paris.

Her dream was realized when Mother Barat accepted Bishop William DuBourg’s invitation to establish schools for the Native Americans and French children in the new diocese of Louisiana. Philippine Duchesne, Eugénie Audé, Octavie Berthold, Marguerite Manteau, and Catherine Lamarre set sail for North America on the Rebecca, March 21, 1818, landing near New Orleans on the Feast of the Sacred Heart, May 29, 1818. After some weeks of recovery there, they traveled six weeks by steamboat to St. Louis, Missouri.

At the direction of Bishop Dubourg, Philippine and her companions went to St. Charles, Missouri, across the Missouri River, where on September 14, 1818, they opened the first Sacred Heart school outside of Europe. It was also the first free school west of the Mississippi and the first Catholic school in what would become the Saint Louis archdiocese. The distance from St. Louis, across the Missouri River, was an impediment, and by the next year, they had relocated to Florissant, Missouri, where in 1820, Mother Duchesne opened the first novitiate. A school in Louisiana, at Grand Coteau, followed in 1821. Others soon followed, and by 1828, ten years after arrival, there were six schools in Missouri and Louisiana, with twenty-seven RSCJ and twenty-six novices. Of the fifty-three, only twelve were Europeans, the rest Americans.

Throughout the years, Philippine continued to nourish her hope to teach Native Americans, her original reason for coming. Finally in 1841, Philippine and three other Religious of the Sacred Heart went to Sugar Creek, Kansas, to establish a school for Potawatomi girls. At seventy-two, too frail to do physical work, and unable to learn the Potawatomi language, she spent much of her time in prayer, gaining the name “The Woman Who Is Always Praying.” After just one year, she was recalled to St. Charles, her original foundation, where she died on November 18, 1852, at age eighty-three, having spent thirty-four years in America.

The memory of her holiness was not forgotten. The collection of testimonies and writings began in 1895. In 1940, she was declared “blessed,” the first step toward canonization, official recognition of her holiness by the Catholic Church. She was declared a saint of the Church in 1988. Her Feast Day is November 18.

Philippine and the first RSCJ became dependent on the forced labor of enslaved persons during their initial years in North America. This practice was entrenched in the economy and civil society of Missouri and Louisiana and was supported by Catholic Church leaders. Today we know that complicity in the institution of enslavement denied the dignity of people of color and was sinful. The Society is working humbly to acknowledge our history with enslavement, to build relationships with the descendants of our enslaved persons and to work towards racial equity and an end to systemic racism in our institutional structures.

Part of this acknowledgment includes lesson plans developed by the Conference on Sacred Heart Education for faculty and students to explore this history with enslaved persons and to study it from the perspective of the historical realities of the time and the Church’s support of enslaving persons in Louisiana and Missouri.