Page 6 - Carrollton 2019

ine Duchesne

After a six-week stay with the Ursulines in New Orleans, Philippine led her group up the Mississippi Riveron the steamship Franklin, arriving, on August 2%
Bishop DuBourg welcomed them and explained that they would be assigned, not to St. Louis,as expected, but to the small village of St. Charles, Missouri,
where he had procured a house for them’. She opened, the first Sacred Heart school outside. Eufope on September 8, l8l8, The Academy of the Sacred

Heart was also the first free school west of the Mississippi) and the first Catholic school1n what would become the St. Louis Archdiocese.
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Running the school in St, Charles was a struggle. Money was tight, the buildjrtg in poor condition, the students unaccustomed to formal education. By the
very next year, these difficulties and the lack pf boarding students caused the Academy to relocate to Florissant, Missouri. The new locatiph did indeed
attract more students, as well as Vocations, and Mother Duchesne opened the first novitiate, In 1827, she founded the City House school in St.: Louis, with
programs for boarders, a free day school and an orphanage.

Finally, in 1841, Philippines wish to serve among the native people Came to fruition. At the specific request of Fr; Peter,Verhaegen, the desuit in charge of
the mission, she went with three other Religious of the Sacred Heart to Sugar Creek, Kansas, to establish a.sehool for Potawatomi: girls. At 72, she; was
too frail to be of much help with the physical work, and she could not learn the Potawatomi language. She spent much of her time in prayer, gaining the
name "Woman Who Prays Always.” After just one year, she was called back to St. Charles (which had reopened in 1828) because of her health. She spent
the last decade of her life at her original foundation there. When she died on November 18, 1852, at age 83, she had spent 3 4 years in America. She was
beatified in 1940 and canonized in,' 1988. Her Feast Day is November 18.

Rose Philippine Duchesne was a pioneer, an educator, a vowed religious. Her fortitude, faith, courage and humility continue to inspire today. You can visit
her shrine at the Academy of the Sacred Heart in St. Charles, Misssouri.

The Society'of the Sacred Heart

students, faculty, parents, alumni, RSCJ and friends of the Sacred Heart gathered at the Academy of the Sacred Heart (ASH)
( celebrate Mass in honor of its 200th anniversary.