Nun Beatified for Work With U.S. Indians

Pope John Paul II on Sunday conferred sainthood on Rose Philippine Duchesne, a French-born nun who worked among the American Indians and founded the American branch of the Society of the Sacred Heart.

During a ceremony in St. Peter’s Basilica, the Pope added the 19th-Century missionary to the list of Roman Catholics who by virtue of their life and actions the church recognizes as being in heaven and worthy of honor by the faithful.

The ceremony also included the canonization of a member of the Trinitarian order, the Spanish priest Simon de Rojas. Born in 1552, De Rojas devoted his life to work among the poor and to promoting devotion to the Virgin Mary, as well as being confessor to the Spanish royal family. He died in 1624.

Duchesne, born in 1769 into a prominent French family, at the age of 35 joined the Society of the Sacred Heart, founded in Paris in 1800 by St. Madeleine Sophie Barat. The primary purpose of the order was to offer formal education to young women, a revolutionary concept at the time.

Missionary to New World

When she was nearly 50, she became the order’s first missionary in the New World and founded schools in the Midwest, primarily in St. Louis and St. Charles, Mo.

Although she never learned English or abandoned her European ways, her pioneer spirit brought her into contact with the Indians. She spent a year among the Potawatomis in what is now Kansas until old age and ill health forced her to retire at the convent in St. Charles, where she died in 1852, at the age of 83.

In his homily to the 20,000 people gathered in St. Peter’s for the canonization Mass, including more than 7,000 in Rome for the Duchesne canonization, the pontiff praised the nun’s “missionary courage.”

5,500 Nuns in Order

Since the days of Philippine Duchesne, the order has spread throughout the world, and at present it includes 5,500 nuns involved in teaching, spiritual guidance and pastoral activities in 40 countries.

Attending Sunday’s ceremony were nuns, students and alumna from throughout Europe and the United States, a family of Potawatami Indians as well as groups from Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Korea. Five members of the Duchesne family also attended.

In her opening address to a symposium held by the order on Saturday, the society’s superior general, Helen McLaughlin, offered the nun as a model for contemporary woman.

“A courageous pioneer woman on the American frontier, strong, unflinching in her determination, Philippine has a message for women today who find themselves on frontiers of a new sort.”