St. Rose Philippine Duchesne

Their story

Rose Philippine Duchesne was born in Grenoble, France, in 1769. At eighteen she entered a convent of the Visitation nuns, but the French Revolution closed the convent and scattered the sisters. Philippine spent those dangerous years caring for the sick, teaching children and helping priests in hiding. In 1804 she joined the new Society of the Sacred Heart, founded by St. Madeleine Sophie Barat. Since childhood Philippine had dreamed of serving Native Americans. In 1818, at the age of forty-nine, she finally sailed to America with four sisters. In St. Charles, Missouri, she opened the first free school west of the Mississippi River. She went on to found schools and an orphanage in the frontier territory, enduring poverty, illness and many setbacks. When she was seventy-one, she was at last sent to serve the Potawatomi people in Kansas. She could not master their language, but she prayed for hours each day. The Potawatomi called her the Woman Who Prays Always. Her health failed within a year, and she returned to St. Charles, where she died in 1852. She was canonized in 1988.