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| You are in: Museum of History >> Hall of North and South Americans >> Philippa Rose Duchesne | |
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| You are in: Museum of History >> Hall of North and South Americans >> Philippa Rose Duchesne | |
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DUCHESNE, Philippa Rose, foundress of the first houses of the Society of the Sacred Heart in America, born in France in 1769; died in St. Charles, La., in 1852. She received a better education than most French ladies of her time, having been taught the classics and higher mathematics with her brothers. She was sent to a convent of the Visitation to prepare for her first communion, and, her confessor being an old missionary who had spent years among the Indians of Louisiana, her thoughts were turned to religious work in America.
In 1793 she resided at Grenoble, and devoted herself to caring for the prisoners and educating the children of the Streets. This life lasted until 1801, when she organized a community of religious women, whose sole occupation was to be teaching. This community was afterward amalgamated with the Society of the Sacred Heart, founded by Madame Barat.
In 1818 she sailed for the United States with four companions, and landed at New Orleans. After a stay of two months she went to St. Louis, where she opened a school under circumstances of great difficulty. She next removed to Florissant, where she established a permanent centre of her order. Madame Duchesne worked a great reformation in the habits of the Creoles, Indians, and colored women who came under her influence.
In 1820 she founded a community of the Sacred Heart congregation in Barreins, on the BoisBrule, and also a boarding school, and free schools for Indians and for white adults. She next founded the house of Grandcoteau, principally devoted to the education of the poor. In 1824 a hurricane damaged some of her houses, but she set to work with renewed energy, and in 1825 established an institution in the parish of St. Michel among the descendants of the French exiles of Acadia.
In 1827 the present house of the order was founded in St. Louis. She closed her ten years' work as a religions pioneer by the foundation of a house in St. Charles. Madame Duchesne governed all her scattered houses with firmness and discretion till 1840, when she was superseded by Madame Galitzin, and became a simple nun again.
She then petitioned to be allowed to fulfill her original intention of going as a missionary among the Indians. With three companions she joined a Jesuit mission among the Pottawattamies. She was well received, but the hardships of such a life for a woman over seventy were considered too great, and she was forced by her superiors to return to St. Charles at the end of a year. She lived to see her order flourish in all the great cities of the United States.
She was canonized by Pope John Paul II on 3 July 1988.
Edited Appletons Encyclopedia by John Looby, Copyright © 2001 VirtualologyTM