Philippine Duchesne established the Society of the Sacred Heart in the United States. She was born in Grenoble, France, August 29, 1769 and was baptized Rose Philippine. Her early years were shaped by the upheaval of life in revolutionary France. In 1805 while she was attempting to revive the Visitation Monastery of St. Marie d'en Haut, Philippine met Madeleine Sophie Barat who herself was building a new religious society. This meeting was the beginning of their lifelong friendship and of their collaboration in developing the Society of the Sacred Heart.

Philippine opened the first house of the Society of the Sacred Heart in St. Charles, Missouri in 1818. Philippine's dream in coming to the American frontier was to work with the Native Americans. After years of leading the Society and establishing houses in Missouri, Louisiana and Canada, Philippine fulfilled her dream and lived and worked among the Potowatomi. She died November 18, 1852 and was canonized July 3, 1988.

Catherine Mooney develops a portrait of Philippine as a model for our time:

In Philippine Duchesne we find a woman who was fully human. Her failures, her weakness and her limits keep her within our reach, in touch with our reality. Her holiness was not some supernatural sanctity. She got it the old-fashioned way, as they way: she earned it, with bumps and bruises. Her human achievement speaks to us in many ways:

She lived in a world that was complicated and unjust. It was difficult for her to discern at times the right thing to do in such a world. Her own struggle to reach beyond the boundaries and biases of her own culture and class can give courage to people today engaged in the works of charity and justice.

She was a woman in a world and a Church run largely by men. Her life and choices reflect her reality as a nineteenth-century woman. They also give us food for thought as we seek to create a Church and a world in which the gifts of both men and women find full complementarity. As a woman on the frontier, she has something to say to women today who find themselves on frontiers of another sort.

Philippine's life, like so many today, was frequently marked by a sense of loneliness and isolation. In a world marked increasingly by individualism and even alienation, we can learn from her attempts to give her life meaning through service of others.

Although she felt a personal call to be with the poor, she spend much of her life in contact with the wealthy. The Church's call to be with the poor is much louder today, but many of us find ourselves in countries or situations or wealth. She is an example of someone who refused to live in just one world, ignoring the other. A woman of communion, she built bridges between worlds.

Philippine's life was marked by failures. Living as we do in a world little tolerant of failure, her life has something to teach us all about what is really of value in life. ⁶

⁶. Mooney, C. M. (1990).Philippine Duchesne: A Woman With the Poor. New York: Paulist Press, pp 30-31.