NEW YORK THE AMERICA PRESS 1914 NIHIL OBSTAT ANGELUS MARIANI, S.C., ADV. Sacr. Rit. Congregationis Assessor REMIGIUS LAFORT, S.T.L. Censor IMPRIMATUR JOHN CARDINAL FARLEY cross Archbishop of New York COPYRIGHT 1914 BY THE AMERICA PRESS In accordance with the decrees of Urban VIII. and other Sovereign Pontiffs, we hereby declare that the terms holy and saintly, as applied to the Venerable Philippine Duchesne, or other personages mentioned in the following pages, are used merely in their ordinary

There have been many heroic figures in the history of American Catholicity. The sowing of the faith in our beloved land was not accomplished lightly. Anguish of soul and weariness of body were required of our pioneers, no less than of those of other lands. Our predecessors in this portion of God's vineyard left home and kindred and friends and cast themselves on a strange shore, wanderers for God's cause, giving their lives in labor and anguish of spirit, that the glad tidings of salvation might

In the early annals of the Catholic Church in this country, no name stands more preeminent than that of the Venerable Philippine Duchesne. She was one of the first, and altogether the greatest, among the spiritual daughters of the Blessed Madeleine Sophie Barat, so well known as the Foundress of the Society of the Sacred Heart. The pioneer of that Institute in the New World, it was in the midst of sorrow, and penury, and strenuous toil, that she cast the seed of the harvest whose plentiful sheav

Mgr. Dubourg cordially welcomed them to his Episcopal city, but the best he could do for them was to assign to them a log-house, which he had leased for their use at St. Charles, a village on the Missouri River, at a distance of thirty miles from St. Louis. Here they opened a boarding school which at first was only very scantily attended. They also opened a school for poor children, which immediately gathered in twenty-two pupils. As the nuns could not afford to keep a servant, they themselves h

In 1821, the little community of Florissant sent out its first offshoot. With the consent and approbation of her Superior General, Mother Barat, Mother Duchesne made her second foundation in Lower Louisiana, as it was then called, at a place known as Grand Coteau, in the Opelousas region. Mother Eugénie Audé and Sister Mary Layton were sent to begin it. A little later, Mother Duchesne was able to send them valuable help in the person of Madame Xavier (Anna) Murphy, who had just arrived from Fran

In 1825, Mother Duchesne was called upon for another foundation. Father Delacroix, the predecessor of Father Van Quickenborne, as pastor of Florissant, was a holy and learned Belgian priest, whom Bishop Dubourg used to call his angel. He had the highest opinion of Mother Duchesne's sanctity, and became a lifelong friend of hers. After leaving Florissant, he was stationed upon the Mississippi River, at a considerable distance above New Orleans. Before long, with the approbation of Bishop Dubourg,

God's saints have never been spared the cross of contradiction, and Mother Duchesne was no exception to the rule. Mother Barat heard from various persons that she was too austere, too narrow, too unwilling to adapt herself to the requirements of the times; and this, it was said, was why the houses in Missouri were not progressing. By these critics, their backwardness was contrasted with the flourishing condition of the Southern houses. There were numerous reasons for this difference. Louisiana h

She had been six years at Florissant when Mother de Galitzin arrived as Visitatrix of the American houses. One of Mother Duchesne's first petitions to her was to be deposed from her office of Superior, on her usual plea of her total unfitness for it. To the sincerity of her estimate of herself, her letters to the Mother Foundress bear ample testimony. In one of them, for instance, she affirms that she was of the nature of a servant, "and," she adds, "it takes more than that to make one fit to go

Her life, to all outward appearances, flowed on quietly enough at St. Charles, but it was marked by several heavy crosses. The one which caused her the bitterest affliction, and weighed upon her longest was the suspension of Mother Barat's correspondence. It began at the time of her return from the Pottowatomie Mission, 1842, and lasted until 1847. Her letters, all but one, reached Mother Barat; but the first two written after her arrival at St. Charles having remained unanswered, she thought he

Her dear Mother Régis Hamilton, whom she had found as Superior at St. Charles, on her return from the Pottowatomie Mission, was replaced three years later and sent to Canada. The aged Mother missed her greatly, and when Mother Barat asked her at a later period, what she could do to give her pleasure, she begged for the return of Mother Régis, though, with her usual disinterestedness, it was for the benefit of the community rather than her own, that she desired it. Her petition was granted, and o

When Mother Duchesne with her companions, was on her way to Bordeaux to take passage for the New World, she stopped at the convent of Poitiers. There, as everywhere, her enterprise excited the deepest interest and admiration. The children were, of course, eager to see and hear her; and, in the youthful crowd that gathered around her full of expectancy, there was one child, not yet in her 'teens, broad-browed, and with eyes full of earnest thoughtfulness. As she listened to the burning words of t