Venerable Philippine Duchesne / A Brief Sketch of the Life and Work of the Foundress of the Society of the Sacred Heart in America

by G. E. M.

After the coming of the Jesuit Fathers, Bishop Rosati's missionaries seldom made any stay at Florissant, but they were constantly passing through it to and from their missions, and Mother Duchesne continued to keep open house for them as heretofore.

Her apostolic longings for the work of the evangelization of the Indians had never died out, and great was her delight when, one day, Father Van Quickenborne brought her two little Indian girls, shyly hiding under his cloak, and asked her to take them and educate them. This was the beginning of the Indian school which, while it lasted, was the joy of her heart. However, it never counted more than twenty children, and came to an end in two years, the Indians being driven back further and further by the inflowing tide of white immigration.

[CHAPTER IV]

ST. MICHAEL'S ESTABLISHED

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, he asked for a foundation of the Religious of the Sacred Heart in his neighborhood. His petition was readily granted, and a location was chosen in the Parish of St. James. To meet the first expenses of the building, the zealous pastor handed over eighteen thousand dollars, which he had collected for the purpose. This was the house known as St. Michael's. Mother Audé was its first Superior, and soon it was in as flourishing a condition as that of Grand Coteau.

Two years later, 1827, Father Neil, one of the resident pastors of St. Louis and director of the college founded by Bishop Dubourg, asked for and obtained a foundation in that city. This was what Mother Duchesne, as well as Mother Barat, had been wishing for from the very beginning. Moreover, though Mother Duchesne had no idea of giving up Florissant, it was too distant from the city for convenience, and besides various other drawbacks, every rain flooded the convent grounds, greatly adding to the hardships endured by the nuns. She applied to Mr. John Mullanphy, a wealthy capitalist, asking him to sell her one of the houses he owned in St. Louis, and he gave her one, with twenty-four acres of ground on the outskirts of the city, together with some assistance in money, on condition that she would, in perpetuity, keep twenty orphans. The house had the name of being haunted on account of the strange, unearthly noises heard in it, especially at night. That circumstance did not frighten Mother Duchesne, who soon discovered that the ghosts were nothing but cats that dropped down the chimneys to hold their nightly assemblies in the vacant rooms. On the first of May of that same year she took possession of the house with one companion, and remained there as Superior, leaving Mother Lucille Mathevon in her place at Florissant. The following year she had in her charge twelve boarders, ten orphans and forty day pupils, most of the latter having been received gratis.

Here, as elsewhere, her life was one of extreme poverty, privation and unremitting toil, to which, as she had always done, she added fasts, vigils and bodily penances, such as have rarely been equalled in the lives of the greatest canonized saints. She was often without a cent in the house, but this did not prove a bar to her charity. The poor never left the convent door empty handed, and the priests, most of whom were doing missionary work, and were as poor as herself, became the objects of her particular care. She supplied them with clothes, especially cassocks, that they might make a suitable appearance at the altar, and also altar linen and vestments, which she embroidered and made herself. During the first year of her stay in St. Louis, her greatest privation, for herself and her community, was the lack of spiritual assistance. On week days they were often without Mass, and on such occasions Mother Duchesne would remain fasting until noon, in the hope that some priest might drop in to offer the Holy Sacrifice at a later hour, as it sometimes happened, or who at least, might give her Holy Communion.

In the meantime, the Jesuit Fathers had been making great headway, and they acquired a firm footing in St. Louis, when Bishop Rosati handed over to Father Van Quickenborne, the head of the newly-organized Mission of Missouri, the college founded several years previously by Bishop Dubourg, and which, in the course of time, developed into the present St. Louis University. But Father Van Quickenborne was replaced some months later in the office of Superior by Father Verhaegen, who had come with him from Maryland in 1823. In this same year, 1827, the latter founded a permanent mission at St. Charles, and made it his headquarters. He also established, at the same place, a school for boys, and applied at once to Mother Duchesne to found one for girls. It seemed a rash undertaking to make two foundations in the same year, with such scanty resources in subjects and money; but what tempted her was the spiritual destitution of the people, who were all Catholics, and among whom the Protestants were busily at work. Mother Barat, tempted in the same way, gave her consent, and Mother Lucille Mathevon was placed in charge of the new house. It did a great deal of good, in spite of a long struggle with poverty and adversity.

Just a little before this time, at Bishop Rosati's desire, Mother Duchesne, with Mother Barat's approbation, had taken charge of the house of the Daughters of Charity, founded by the Father Nerinckx, near the head of the Bayou Lafourche, in the present State of Louisiana, and now threatened with extinction for want of vocations. The devoted prelate's earnest request could not be refused, but the foundation was an unpromising one from the beginning, and a few years later it had to be closed.

The following year, 1828, as there were already six American houses, Mother Barat directed Mother Duchesne to assemble their superiors in a Provincial Council, in order to take measures for securing uniformity of action among them; and, to spare them the trouble of coming to her, Mother Duchesne went down to meet them at St. Michael's. After the Council she visited the houses in Louisiana, and was able, in her report to the Mother General, to give a very favorable account of them all except that of Lafourche where, to say nothing of other obstacles to success, the directions given by her in accordance with the intentions of Mother Barat, had not been understood or carried out.