Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne (1852)

She was a French girl born at Grenoble who became a Visitation nun.  After her Order had been violently attacked and dispersed during the French Revolution, under the guidance of Saint Madeleine Sophie Barat she incorporated her community into the Madams of the Sacred Heart.  Blessed Rose Philippine’s great desire was to go and labor in foreign missions.  When she was forty-nine years old, she set sail for America.  She landed at New Orleans, and then went north to Saint Charles, not far from Saint Louis, Missouri.  She later worked among the Indians at Sugar Creek.  The Indians called her “the woman who prays always.”  It is one of the glories of the United States that the body of this saintly nun is still kept in our country.  She died when she was eighty-three years old.  She is buried at Saint Charles, Missouri.

For a longer article on Saint Rose Philippine, see our “Frontier Missionary of the Sacred Heart.”

Mosaic of Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne, from the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis, Mo. (source)

Mosaic of Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne, from the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis, Mo. (source)