× Expand Courtesy of the Society of the Sacred Heart A painting of Sr. Philippine Duchesne en route, by Margaret Mary Nealis RSCJ

Courtesy of the Society of the Sacred Heart Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne, memorialized in the ceiling mosaics at the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis

A mosaic image on the St. Louis Cathedral ceiling of a black-habited nun, flanked by a leather-clad, Native American girl and a richly dressed St. Louis maiden, says little about her significance. She's one of many nuns on the cathedral ceiling, representing religious orders that founded schools, hospitals and other missions throughout the region.

But this nun is special: She is the Patroness of St. Louis, according to the archdiocese, alongside the city’s sainted namesake, King Louis IX of France. She's French, too, like other renowned early St. Louisans, including founders Pierre Laclede and Auguste Chouteau.

Her story began during the brutal French Revolution, shifted gears when she became an innovative educator on the Missouri frontier, and found its fulfillment on an Indian Reservation in eastern Kansas.

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the arrival of that nun, later canonized Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne. She and four other members of the Society of the Sacred Heart reached St. Charles, Missouri, in 1818. So on September 7, the school that Duchesne founded, Academy of the Sacred Heart (now co-ed), along with Duchesne High School, will host a reenactment of the historic event. Originally planned for Frontier Park, the event has been moved to Duchesne High School's gymnasium at 2550 Elm Street because of the threat of storms.

At 9 a.m. on September 7, characters in period garb will set the mood for the 10:30 a.m. reenactment, followed by more entertainment at 11:30 a.m. For details, check out the bicentennial section on the Society’s website, which offers a historical overview of Duchesne’s life, 1769–1852.

Born into the French aristocracy, Duchesne rolled up her sleeves when she came here, setting up the first free school for girls—as well as a boarding and day school that charged tuition—in rugged St. Charles. She was 49. Coping with cold winters and hot summers, first in a log cabin beyond St. Charles’s Main St., then in rural Florissant and still-pristine St. Louis City, Duchesne acted as mother superior to three fledgling communities here

The cubby under the steps in the Florissant convent. This is where Duchesne slept many nights, instead of upstairs in the bedroom designated for her as Mother Superior.

and three more in Louisiana and Kentucky. An inability to learn English made teaching difficult, so she left that task mostly to the other sisters. Embracing poverty and pain in her love of God, she oversaw operations, nursed the sick among her, nurtured students, handled farm/household chores, supported Jesuit missionaries who lived next door in Florissant, and prayed like a warrior.

Back in France, Bishop William DuBourg had enlisted Duchesne to teach Native Americans in the Missouri territory, but that was a ruse. Turns out he wanted her to educate “infidels” of a different sort—those living in and around St. Louis who had not been steeped in Roman Catholicism. By the time Philippine arrived in the area, “Les Sauvages,” as the French called the natives, had been moving farther west as Americans moved in. Only a few “half-breeds” peopled the Sacred Heart free school. The Sisters ran a school for Indian girls when stationed in Florissant in the early 1820s, but that lasted only two years.

DuBourg and Duchesne's Jesuit superiors found her compliant in some ways, strong-willed in others. While she failed to fully buck the bishop’s ban on educating free or slave blacks (they gave token instruction to blacks one day a week), Duchesne did admit to hating the social set-up. She wanted to allow women of color into the Sacred Heart novitiate, but that proved impossible in the highly segregated pre-Civil War era in Missouri, says Carolyn Osiek, RSCJ, archivist at the U.S. province of the Society of the Sacred Heart.

Courtesy of the Society of the Sacred Heart A portrait of Mother Rose Philippine Duchesne at the time of her canonization

Though a woman of her time, Duchesne had unbelievable determination, says Osiek, who recently published a collection of Duchesne’s letters—many of which the saint sent to her large family back in France and to the order’s head (and fellow saint) Madeleine Sophie Barat, stationed in Paris.

“She never gave up,” Osiek says. “I call St. Philippine the patron saint of life’s second half. She achieved a lot in her older age.”

At 72, Duchesne finally saw her dream of living among Native Americans come true. She joined three other Sacred Heart sisters and some Jesuit missionaries at the Sugar Creek mission in eastern Kansas, serving displaced Potawatomi from Indiana. That role lasted only a year before her religious fellows and Bishop Kenrick called her back to St. Charles. Along with sewing vestments for her beloved Jesuits, she taught in the parish school on the Sacred Heart grounds until her death in 1852.

The saint felt like a failure, due to language barriers and old age, Osiek says. “Yet, she touched the Potawatomi, who came to call her the ‘Woman Who Prays Always.’

“Duchesne was great-hearted.”