St. Rose Duchesne

 

 Born on Aug. 29, 1769, in Grenoble, France, Rose Duchesne was the second of eight children. Five of the six sisters would become visitation sisters.

She briefly joined the Grenoble Visitation sisters until the government closed all women’s religious communities due to the Enlightenment.

After a pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Francis Regis in 1800, she resolved to dedicate her life to the teaching of the poor. She and four nuns adopted a new name “Daughters of the Propagation of the Faith” on Mar. 3, 1803, and the following year sought admission into the Society of the Sacred Heart, founded by Madeleine-Sophie Barat.

In 1817 Louis DuBourg, bishop of Louisiana visited France. Because of the urgent plea for missionaries and a personal meeting between the bishop and Mother Barat, permission was obtained for Mother Duchesne and her first nuns to go to America. After spending 10 weeks at sea, the missionaries landed in the US on May 25 in 1818. They stayed with the Ursulines at New Orleans for several weeks before heading by boat to St. Louis. The bishop ordered the sisters to take up residence at St. Charles Missouri.

After Pope Gregory XVII urged the society to engage in missionary activity among the Native Americans, three sisters were appointed to this task. Due to her advanced years, Mother Duchesne was not chosen. The intercession of her priest friend called Mother Duchesne to be included. Their destination was a Potawatomi Indian village at Sugar Creek, KS.

Mother Duchesne arrived in Sugar Creek in July of 1841. Her age, her inability to master the Native tongue, and her ill health, combined to limit her material support she could offer to the missionary effort. She spent long hours nursing sick tribe members and the reputation of her sanctity grew. The Indians called her “woman who prays always”, in honor of her extensive periods of time she spent kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament.

After being sent to St. Louis by her superiors, she died Nov. 18, 1852 having attained her eighty-third year.

Mother Duchesne’s remains were interred in the community cemetery at St. Charles. After lying in the ground for three years, encased in a plain wooden coffin, her body was exhumed and the corpse was found to be incorrupt at this time, although later it decomposed. Mother Rose Duchesne was beatified in 1940 and in 1988 was pronounced a saint of the Church by Pope John Paul II. Today, if we have never prayed to St. Rose of Duchesne, a saint who walked, worked and prayed in Kansas, let us beseech her to help us to pray before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.