St. Rose-Philippine Duchesne (1769-1852)-religious, Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Link: St. Philippine Duchesne
- Two pictures

Link: The History of Sacred Heart Academy
- and St. Philippine Duchesne

Link: The Shrine of St. Philippine Duchesne
- 619 N. Second Street St. Charles, MO 63301 (636) 946-6127

Link: Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Washington, D.C.
   -    In 1999, through the work of Ann Wilson Brown, Monsignor Jerome Wilkerson, and Joan Klutho, a white marble statue of the saint was installed in The Hall of American Saints, within the Crypt Church
Link: History of the Jesuits in America
   -   Pictures, letters and more.
Link: Vatican News Service: Rose-Philippine Duchesne (1769-1852)
   -   religious, of the Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Most children are very perceptive. They often knickname their teachers and other adults in an extremely accurate manner. The little Potawatomi Indians were not wrong about "woman-who-prays-always," Blessed Rose Philippine Duchesne.
Indeed, she had need of prayer; not only to bear her many responsibilities, but also to accept the untold disappointments she met from within and without her religious community. She did not often "get her own way" but she surely accepted all tribulation as well as joy, as "God's way!"
Rose was the daughter of an active political father, Pierre Francois Duchesne who practiced law in Grenoble in the South of France. Her mother was a gentlewoman from the province of Dauphine. Like most girls of such a family, she was sent to a convent school under the direction of the Visitation nuns. She became attracted to religious life there and the first encounter with opposition occurred. Her father opposed her wish to enter the Visitation order. He had a wedding in mind but she refused and entered the order in 1788.
She remained there for over four years while the sisters tried to cope with the troubled times of the French Revolution. Eventually, her convent was disbanded, as were virtually all religious orders in France. She returned to her family and spent 10 years devoting herself to charity, often sheltering priests who were being persecuted. She also taught the town's children.
After this decade of waiting, good fortune seemingly smiled on her when, after the turmoil of the early days of the Revolution, she was able to enter the convent of Sainte-Marie-d'en-Haut. However, she was unable to regroup the Visitation community. With a few companions, she joined a new order, The Society of the Sacred Heart. With these sisters, her attention turned from Europe to the United States.
As a girl in the lush grapelands of southern France, Rose had often read of the missionaries in America and dreamed her young dreams of adventure. When, in maturer years, she recognized mission life as a call to hardship and deprivation, her enthusiasm remained undiminished. Now that the Society of the Sacred Heart had heeded the call of the American bishops for help, none was more eager to respond than she.
ANOTHER SETBACK
But the time had not yet come. The community had needs at home which had to be met. Among these was the foundation of the first house of her order in Paris in 1815. Three years were spent in arranging household affairs, establishing religious regularity and forming a family spirit in the young community. Then, in 1818, the time for the missions came!
Along with four companions, she left France for America. They arrived at New Orleans, LA, on May 29, 1818. William du Bourg, the bishop of Louisiana commissioned her to open a school in St. Charles, Missouri, the first free school west of the Mississippi River for Catholic and non-Catholic children. She also built a convent at Florissant, MO and operated a free parish school and a small orphanage. Extending her resources and energies even further, Mother Duchesne started a school for Indian children (which unfortunately was short-lived) and an academy for boarding pupils for this pioneer area of vast spaces had few formal schools for the expanding population. Mother Rose's ideals spread to her pupils and many fine young women wished to join her in her work, thus necessitating the first novitiate of the Society of the Sacred Heart in the U.S.A. Madeline Sophie Barat, who founded the society, had an able follower turned leader in Mother Rose Philippine.
THE DREAM COME TRUE, BRIEFLY
One would think that all this hard work, the long travels, the need to be informed about building and supporting her many endeavors, would have long ago erased the deep longing to be a missionary in the sense of "living with the natives!" Not so! At the time of life when one deserves peace, quiet and rest, Mother Rose set out for Sugar Creek, Kansas. She was 72 years old but she wanted to live among the Indians. Again she took with her four companions. They traveled by boat up the Mississippi to the junction of the Osage River and Sugar Creek. There they were met by 500 braves in gala dress who led them to a village of 700 inhabitants. Among them were Potawatomi, already Catholics, the Kickapoo, the Wabash and Osage tribal members.
She had enjoyed the pleasant diversion of the river boat ride and welcomed the opportunity to gain strength for the four day journey by wagon! Upon her arrival she was revivified and settled down to visit the old and sick and to teach the Potawatomi's children. They soon gave her the name "Quah-kah-ka-num-ad,"-the woman who prays always.
Having founded six convents and accepted 64 young women into the congregation, Mother Rose found joy in the simple life of the Indian tribes-people. However, it ended all too quickly. On Palm Sunday of the next spring, she was directed to return to St. Charles, where she had founded the first school of her community. It was a bitter reward for a woman who had suffered many disappointments and who now found such loving reward among the Indians. Even so, she accepted the decree as an obedience to her superiors. At St. Charles she lived in humble observance of the rule and in quiet meditation. While there she had the joy of seeing her first pupil in New Orleans become the first Mother at Manhattanville, NY.
On Nov. 1, 1852, in her 83rd year, as the Angelus bell rang, Mother Rose died. Her confessor wrote of her: "Eminent in all virtues, but especially in humility, she sweetly and calmly departed this life." Mother Duchesne was named "Blessed" in 1940 by Pope Pius XII. Her tomb is built into a beautiful new church in St. Charles where she was known even there, far from the Potawatomi children, as "the woman who prays always." The State of Missouri inscribed her name first among the women on the Pioneer Roll of Fame in St. Louis. The inscription on the plaque reads: "Some names must not wither." Certainly Mother Rose Philippine Duchesne's has not. Twelve thousand people celebrated her pioneer spirit and holiness in a Te Deum Service at the St. Louis Cathedral on her beatification day and 3,500 Knights of Columbus processed to her shrine to unveil the commemorative plaque.

Courtesy of Catholic Information Network (CIN)

http://www.ash1818.org/history.htm

A School Rich in History and Tradition

When the invitation of Bishop Louis William DuBourg to come to America was issued in the parlor of the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Paris in 1817, it signaled the beginning of the international mission of the Society of the Sacred Heart. Philippine Duchesne, whose zeal to work with native Americans overcame the prudent advice of Mother Barat's advisors, embarked a year later with high hopes, unswerving faith and a cohort of four religious who shared her dream for the New World.

The hardships of the long voyage across the Atlantic and the protracted trip up the river from New Orleans to St. Louis were crowned with the disappointment of learning, when they finally reported to the bishop, that their destination had been moved even farther from home. He had chosen the unlikely village of St. Charles, some 25 miles away, because he was able to find suitable housing for his new missionaries there. Although they were disappointed in the decision, the five religious bravely set out to begin their "first free school west of the Mississippi River" in a small log cabin which would, at times, house as many as 20 day students - along with three boarders and the nuns.

Conditions were desperately poor that first year. The nuns learned to "make do" with very little. They depended on friends, relatives and the fledgling Society in France for shipments of supplies to supplement their own resources. Almost as painful was the deprivation of communication which the distance necessitated. Mother Duchesne was forced to make decisions without consultation or to wait for the long delays of "opportunity mail" that found its way on rare occasions between St. Charles and her superior's desk.

The school's three boarders and day students (who attended school sporadically) survived the first year -- although one girl nearly died that winter. By the time spring had come, Philippine importuned Bishop DuBourg to take her closer to St. Louis so that the school would attract more girls from that city. Much to the grief of the St. Charles residents, the new Academy closed on Prize Day, August 30. A few days later, the shabby belongings of the Religious of the Sacred Heart were heaped onto rafts to cross the Missouri River. Florissant was the next site for their mission. Here the boarding school grew, thanks to somewhat improved conditions, and the first novitiate of the Society was founded as well.

In 1828 the Jesuits, who had been working actively in this area for many years, built their first stone church in St. Charles (quite near the little log cabin that had housed the first Academy of the Sacred Heart). The priests asked the nuns to come back to St. Charles; and, much to the joy of the townspeople, they did - returning to that miserable cabin which had stood vacant for the nine years of their absence. Once again, the religious were eking out an existence in St. Charles. But, through the benefit of their hard work and the enthusiastic support of the families whose daughters they taught, they managed to erect a brick convent school in 1835. That building stands to this day along with all the additions that have attached themselves to it over the years. Philippine Duchesne wrote to Mother Barat in 1851 (just a year before her death), "If you could see the pretty place we have here, standing beside the church as it does, you would not have the courage to take it from us, even if there were only four of us to carry on the work." Many of the years of St. Charles' history can be summed up in the word "struggle." That was the way of life for the religious here who held fast to this place because of the intense devotion of their foundress for her first house in America.

Enrollment flourished after Phililppine Duchesne's death (as she had predicted it would), and certainly the young women who were fortunate enough to attend the school derived the full benefit of a Sacred Heart education here. St. Charles has long been characterized by simplicity - often bordering on poverty - and a no-frills sense of purpose that reflects the spirit of its sainted foundress. (Indeed if ever we were guilty of the sin of pride it was in our boasting of St. Philippine - not so much in the fact of her canonization, but in the story of her life, which we are pleased to claim as integral to our history.) We believe that her pioneer spirit of rugged determination and zeal for the Sacred Heart of Jesus are as much our inherited fortune as the excellent education that is offered here.

In the mid-20th century, when Sacred Heart schools were closing across the country due to the decline of religious vocations and, perhaps, the waning popularity of single sex schools, it would not have been surprising for St. Charles to be one of the first to expire. (It was certainly not a shining example of fiscal independence! All of the other schools were in larger cities; and, only by the accidental choice of Bishop DuBourg in 1818, had St. Charles been selected.) And thus, because of its history as the first foundation and certainly because of the tomb of its foundress, lovingly venerated here, a way to keep the school afloat was devised: the secondary school would be closed and little boys would be accepted - for the first time - in the elementary grades. Thus in 1972, a boys' school began to operate co-institutionally with the girls'. The name Perier Elementary was chosen for this school to commemorate the family (consisting largely of boys) that grew up side-by-side with the Duchesne family during Philippine's childhood in Grenoble. The school maintained the Perier name until 1993, by which time it had become evident that there was no division between the boys' and girls' classes, and the title only served to confuse.

In 1986 one more year was added to the Primary department. Four-year-olds now come for half-day Pre-Primary class. Thus, our annual enrollment now averages nearly 700 children in grades Pre-Primary through Eighth. Wouldn't Philippine be proud? We like to reflect on the words St. Madeleine Sophie wrote to her dear friend and spiritual daughter in 1829: "I hold firmly to St. Charles, and I am delighted that we have a house there. It may accomplish more good than any other house."

American Cathlic's Saint of the Day

November 20, 2004

St. Rose Philippine Duchesne

(1769-1852)

Born in Grenoble, France, of a family that was among the new rich, Philippine learned political skills from her father and a love of the poor from her mother. The dominant feature of her temperament was a strong and dauntless will, which became the material—and the battlefield—of her holiness. She entered the convent at 19 without telling her parents and remained despite their opposition. As the French Revolution broke, the convent was closed, and she began taking care of the poor and sick, opened a school for street urchins and risked her life helping priests in the underground.

When the situation cooled, she personally rented her old convent, now a shambles, and tried to revive its religious life. The spirit was gone, and soon there were only four nuns left. They joined the infant Society of the Sacred Heart, whose young superior, St. Madeleine Sophie Barat, would be her lifelong friend. In a short time Philippine was a superior and supervisor of the novitiate and a school. But her ambition, since hearing tales of missionary work in Louisiana as a little girl, was to go to America and work among the Indians. At 49, she thought this would be her work. With four nuns, she spent 11 weeks at sea en route to New Orleans, and seven weeks more on the Mississippi to St. Louis. She then met one of the many disappointments of her life. The bishop had no place for them to live and work among Native Americans. Instead, he sent her to what she sadly called "the remotest village in the U.S.," St. Charles, Missouri. With characteristic drive and courage, she founded the first free school for girls west of the Mississippi.

It was a mistake. Though she was as hardy as any of the pioneer women in the wagons rolling west, cold and hunger drove them out—to Florissant, Missouri, where she founded the first Catholic Indian school, adding others in the territory. "In her first decade in America Mother Duchesne suffered practically every hardship the frontier had to offer, except the threat of Indian massacre—poor lodging, shortages of food, drinking water, fuel and money, forest fires and blazing chimneys, the vagaries of the Missouri climate, cramped living quarters and the privation of all privacy, and the crude manners of children reared in rough surroundings and with only the slightest training in courtesy" (Louis E. Callan, R.S.C.J., Philippine Duchesne).

Finally, at 72, in poor health and retired, she got her lifelong wish. A mission was founded at Sugar Creek, Kansas, among the Potawatomi. She was taken along. Though she could not learn their language, they soon named her "Woman-Who-Prays-Always." While others taught, she prayed. Legend has it that Native American children sneaked behind her as she knelt and sprinkled bits of paper on her habit, and came back hours later to find them undisturbed. She died in 1852 at the age of 83.

Comment:

Divine grace channeled her iron will and determination into humility and selflessness, and to a desire not to be made superior. Still, even saints can get involved in silly situations. In an argument with her over a minor change in the sanctuary, a priest threatened to remove her tabernacle. She patiently let herself be criticized by younger nuns for not being progressive enough. Through it all, 31 years, she hewed to the line of a dauntless love and an unshakable observance of her religious vows.

Quote:

“We cultivate a very small field for Christ, but we love it, knowing that God does not require great achievements but a heart that holds back nothing for self.... The truest crosses are those we do not choose ourselves.... He who has Jesus has everything.”

From Daily Catholic

Feast of Saint Rose Phillippine Duschesne , Virgin, Missionary and Religious

This saint, Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne was canonized in 1988 by Pope John Paul II. She was born on August 29, 1769 in Grenoble, France to a family whose father was a wealthy merchant. Educated by the Visitation nuns of Sainte Marie d'en Haut, a vocation was fostered to that order despite the protests of her parents who wanted her to marry. Rose had always had a desire to be a missionary, on fire with zeal for Jesus and wanting to share it with everyone. When the French Revolution broke out the Vistation nuns were forced to disperse and Rose was left alone. Her prayers to be reunited with a community of Visitation nuns were not answered, rather God chose a new order for Rose in 1804 - the Religious of the Sacred Heart which had been founded in 1800 by Mother Madeleine Sophie Barat. This was a missionary order of nuns which, through God's Providence, brought Sr. Rose to New Orleans in the southern United States in 1818. There, with four other nuns, Rose was sent up the Mississippi River by the bishop of New Orleans to St. Charles, Missouri where she founded the first American Sacred Heart house and began the first free school west of the Mississippi in a log cabin in Florissant just outside St. Louis. By 1828 there were six houses along the mighty Mississippi. It was here that she intervened with the Indians who had objected to the Jesuits and through her efforts and good will, preserved the Jesuit mission. At the age of 72, St. Rose resigned as head of the American branch of her Order to answer Jesuit missionary Father De Smet's call for her to pursue missionary work. With a handful of other hand-picked nuns she traveled farther west to Kansas where she opened a girls' school for the Cherokees and other Indian tribes in Sugar Creek, Kansas. Though she could not learn the Indians' dialect, she was able to communicate through her prayers and devout example. The Indians loved and admired this woman they called "The Woman Who Prays Always" that many conversions were manifested even though St. Rose was in Sugar Creek for only one year because ill health mandated that she return to the mother house in St. Charles where Rose died on October 18th, 1852. Her remains were enshrined at the mother house and her name is the first one listed on the Pioneer Roll of Fame in St. Louis' famed Jefferson Memorial Building. She played a major role in bringing the faith to the heartland of America where, in the gateway to the west, it has remained strong to this day. She was beatified in 1940 by Pope Pius XII before being canonized 48 years later.

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