Saint Philippine Duchesne (1769-1852)

Rose Philippine was born on 29 August 1769 in Grenoble, into a family "established at Romans and at Grane." Her father, Pierre-François Duchesne, was a lawyer; her mother, Rose-Euphrosine Périer, was the sister of the industrialist Claude Périer. Philippine was the second of seven daughters.^[4][5]

In 1781, at twelve years old, she was placed in the monastery of Sainte-Marie-d'en-Haut, run by the Visitation. Her father withdrew her the following year, then, at nineteen, she obtained leave to enter definitively in 1788. In 1791, the Revolution scattered the congregation and turned the monastery into a prison and a barracks. Philippine stayed in Grenoble: she nursed prisoners, fed and taught children, at the risk of her life.^[6][7]

It was at Grane that she "consolidated her vocation." During the Terror, she founded a small community that visited prisoners and the poor. In 1801, the Visitandines recovered Sainte-Marie-d'en-Haut; Philippine was appointed its superior.^[8][9]

In 1804, Madeleine-Sophie Barat came to Grenoble and proposed attaching the small Visitation house to the Sacred Heart Institute, founded in 1800. Philippine accepted; she pronounced her first vows in 1805 at Sainte-Marie-d'en-Haut. A lasting spiritual friendship bound her to the foundress. In 1815, at Barat's request, she founded the Sacred Heart convent in Paris and served there as mistress of novices.^[10][11]

On 21 March 1818, she left Bordeaux aboard the Rebecca with four religious (Eugénie Audé, Octavie Berthold, Catherine Lamarre and Marguerite Manteau), at the invitation of Bishop Louis DuBourg, bishop of Louisiana, who had come to France the previous year to recruit religious. After ten weeks at sea (a stop refused at Havana, an encounter with an Argentine privateer who let the ship pass), they arrived at New Orleans on 29 May 1818, feast of the Sacred Heart, then travelled up the Mississippi to Saint Louis.^{[12][13][14][15]}

In September 1818, the community settled at Saint Charles (Missouri), the village DuBourg called "the most remote in the United States." On 14 September, she opened there the first Sacred Heart school outside Europe: a boarding school and, beside it, a free school for poor girls, the first free school west of the Mississippi and the first Catholic school of the future archdiocese of Saint Louis. Teaching there was given in French.^[16][17][18]

Foundations followed one after another: Florissant (1819, school, then the first novitiate in 1820), Grand Coteau in Louisiana (1821, convent and novitiate, later transferred to Convent), Saint Michel (1826), an orphanage at Saint Louis (1827). By 1828, six Sacred Heart houses were operating in the United States.^[19][20][21]

Nominis notes that she founded "a school where black, white and mixed-race pupils studied together in the heart of the slaveholding South." At the same time, the Society itself took part in that system: from 1818 until the end of the Civil War, the Religious of the Sacred Heart bought, sold and held in bondage more than a hundred men, women and children in Louisiana, Missouri and Kansas, whose forced labour built and sustained their schools. The Institute acknowledges this today as a shameful part of its history and is carrying out a work of truth and reparation.^[22][23][24]

Her "strong temperament," according to Nominis, cost her the office of superior. She nevertheless continued her work of education and foundation.^[25]

In 1841, at seventy-two, Philippine left with three other religious for Sugar Creek (Kansas) to open a school for the daughters of the Potawatomi whom the federal government had displaced, at the invitation of the Jesuit Pierre-Jean De Smet. Too old to learn the language and too frail for physical work, she spent most of her days in prayer: the Potawatomi called her "the woman who prays always" (Quahkahkanumad). The Institute's archives report that De Smet saw in her "the greatest saint in Missouri."^{[26][27][28][29]}

She lived there only a year. Her health forced her to return to Saint Charles in 1842. The sources indicate that evangelization among the Indians remained very limited at the time; Philippine herself measured the gap between missionary hope and visible fruit.^[30][31]

The last ten years passed at the Saint Charles convent, in a small room under the staircase, near the chapel. Philippine grew weaker and lost her sight. She wrote in solitude: "I live now in solitude and am able to use my time reflecting on the past and preparing for death."^[32]

She died at Saint Charles on 18 November 1852, at the age of 83 (47 years of religious life, 34 years in America). She was first buried in the convent cemetery; a first small shrine was raised in 1855; her remains were placed in the present shrine on 13 June 1952.^[33][34][35]

From the cause to canonization

The cause was introduced in 1895. Declared venerable, she was beatified on 12 May 1940 at Rome by Pius XII, then canonized on 3 July 1988 by Pope John Paul II, together with Saint Simón de Rojas. In his homily, John Paul II showed her "irresistibly drawn to poor children and needy families" by her love of the Eucharist, and saluted thirty-four years spent helping and educating them in the Middle West, up to a "fruitful attempt at apostolate among the Indians."^{[36][37][38][39][40]}

"Faithful to a vision she received in her youth, Rose Philippine gave up the security of her own culture and language and placed herself at the service of the Church of Christ in the New World. She thought not of what she was leaving behind, but of those to whom she was sent, and above all of the One who sent her." : John Paul II, canonization homily, 3 July 1988^[41]

"At Saint Charles in Missouri in 1852, Saint Philippine Duchesne, virgin, Religious of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, who formed a religious community during the Revolution and founded many schools in America." : Roman Martyrology, quoted by Nominis^[42]

Saint Philippine Duchesne is celebrated on 18 November, the day of her death, the date kept by the liturgical calendar as by the saints-of-the-day calendar. Nominis specifies a "local feast"; the first name Philippine is celebrated the same day.^[43]

The principal place of memory is the Saint Charles shrine (Missouri), in the Frenchtown Historic District. Iconography shows her as a Religious of the Sacred Heart, sometimes in prayer before an Indian tent, or with the attribute of education (book, school). The Potawatomi nickname, "the woman who prays always," has become the most quoted formula of her spirituality: a mission that passes through prayer more than through words.^[44][45]

The life of Philippine Duchesne is documented by her letters, the chronicles of the Society of the Sacred Heart, American diocesan archives and the acts of the beatification and canonization processes. The account above rests on Nominis, the French and English Wikipedia notices, the history pages of the Society of the Sacred Heart and the canonization homily of John Paul II.^{[46][47][48][49][50]}

• Madeleine-Sophie Barat (1779-1865): foundress of the Society of the Sacred Heart, whose American branch Philippine developed.
• The Sacred Heart of Jesus: the spirituality of the Institute to which Philippine belonged.
• Saint Kateri Tekakwitha: another figure of the Church in North America, an Algonquin virgin.
• Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque: the source of the devotion to the Sacred Heart on which the Institute lives.