By Carolyn Osiek, RSCJ

 

The history of the Society of the Sacred Heart in the United States begins in the heart and mind of Philippine Duchesne (1769-1852), who was inspired already as a child by the stories of missionaries in America returned to her hometown of Grenoble, France. Philippine at the age of nineteen entered the Visitation convent of Sainte-Marie-d’en-Haut that towered above the city of Grenoble. One might have thought then that she would spend the rest of her life behind convent walls, but the forces of the French Revolution dissolved the convent in 1792. In the following years she was able to gain control of the old monastery building, where she tried without success to reassemble the community. After twelve years of uncertainty, she joined the newly founded Society of the Sacred Heart in 1804, at the time only present in France.

Philippine lived during these years with her conflict between attachment to her dear monastery and her desire for foreign missions. In her prayer on January 10, 1806, she resolved the conflict by letting go of Sainte-Marie in favor of a global vision and readiness to go wherever the call would take her.

One of the ways in which Philippine’s deep love of prayer was expressed was in night vigils, sometimes for the whole night. The best known of these nocturnal vigils happened on Holy Thursday to Good Friday, the night of April 3-4, 1806. Guided by her missionary patron saints, Francis Xavier and Francis Regis, she took an imaginary journey in her prayer from Calvary to the New World, bringing the Eucharist and spreading its blessings everywhere. When she wrote a report of the twelve hours of prayer the next day to her superior, Saint Madeleine Sophie Barat, she was still full of joy and enthusiasm.

It would be twelve more years before she could answer that call. Meanwhile, Philippine was named secretary general of the Society and moved to Paris. The call finally came in the person of Louis Guillaume Valentine Dubourg, newly consecrated bishop in 1815 of “Louisiana and the Floridas,” the whole territory of the Louisiana Purchase, the entire middle of what is now the United States, and parts of the southeast. He embarked on a two-year trip to secure priests and sisters from Europe for his sprawling new diocese. This brought him to the Society’s motherhouse on Rue des Postes, Paris, on January 14, 1817, when he was given some hope of recruits from the Society, and again on May 16, at which time he was refused, until Philippine knelt at the feet of her superior, Madeleine Sophie Barat, to plead for her consent. Recognizing the moment of grace, Madeleine Sophie gave it, promising him six religious for the spring of 1818.

By the time they left Paris in February 1818, the six were down to five. Eugénie Audé (1792 or 1795-1842) was from the nobility. She entered the Society in Grenoble in 1815, but then went to Paris, “still bringing with her the manners and affected speech of the world.” This was soon changed, however, to a complete conversion in a retreat. She expressed to Philippine a desire to accompany her to America, the only one known to have asked to be sent as companion to Louisiana. She made her final profession the very morning of their departure from the motherhouse in Paris, February 8, 1818.

Octavie Berthold (1797-1833) was raised in a distinguished Calvinist family in Geneva. She was well educated, fluent in English, Italian, and Latin. She converted to Catholicism in 1809 when she went as a teacher to Grenoble, where she entered the Society in 1815. She finished her novitiate in Paris, so she was known to Philippine. She was finally professed there a few days before departure, February 2, 1818. Soon after arrival in America, she bravely served even as she began to show signs of a debilitating cancer that took her life in St. Louis in 1833, the first of the original band to die.

Catherine Lamarre (1779-1845) entered as a coadjutrix sister, making her first vows in 1806 in Amiens. She had expressed a desire to go on mission to Martinique, thinking it was closer than it actually was, but she was fearful about going as far as Louisiana. After arrival, she lived the rest of her life in Missouri and died in Florissant.

Marguerite Manteau (1779-1841) entered the Society in Poitiers in 1808. She was professed as a coadjutrix sister in 1810. She did not leave from Paris but joined the group by pre-arrangement as they passed through Poitiers on the way to Bordeaux. She spent her later years at Grand Coteau, where she died in during the year that Philippine was at Sugar Creek.

At departure, Eugénie was in her late twenties, Octavie thirty-one, and Catherine and Marguerite thirty-nine or forty. Philippine at forty-eight was the oldest yet would be the last to die, in 1852. In Paris on the morning of February 8, the motherhouse community had celebrated Eugénie’s profession and gone to dinner. The preordered carriage arrived early, and they had to rise from their noonday meal quickly to gather together their belongings and depart. An eye witness related that Octavie hesitated before getting into the carriage, and dry-eyed Philippine calmly took her by the elbow and moved her forward.

From there they journeyed by way of Poitiers to Bordeaux. At Poitiers, their fifth member, Marguerite Manteau, joined them. They told the students about their coming adventure. A student in the school named Anna du Rousier was profoundly impressed. She would later become a Religious of the Sacred Heart, exchange profession crosses with Philippine on her deathbed, and carry the Society to South America.

After a wait of many weeks, the group of five missionaries boarded the Rebecca on March 19. The ship cleared the harbor and headed to open seas on March 21. After 52 days at sea with no sight of land, and a brief stop in Cuba, they arrived in New Orleans on May 29, 1818.

After receiving hospitality from the Ursuline Sisters to rest for several weeks in New Orleans, they embarked by steamboat up the Mississippi River to St. Louis. From there, they were placed across the Missouri River in St. Charles, where they opened first a free school, then a boarding school. After one year there, Bishop Dubourg recalled them back across the river to Florissant, where they again opened both kinds of schools in the fall of 1819.

Only two years later, in 1821, their place of residence, Missouri, entered the Union in the “Missouri Compromise” as one of the United States where slavery was legal. Along with future foundations in Louisiana, the houses of the Society participated in enslavement.

The same year, 1821, the original group of five was separated when Bishop Dubourg asked them to make a foundation near Opelousas, Louisiana, on a property offered to him by the widow of Mr. Charles Smith, in the tiny remote village of Grand Coteau. Eugénie Audé, one of the youngest of the five, who had only made her final vows the day of their departure from Paris, was chosen to go. With her went a new novice, Mary Layton. The two set off for the unknown and were able to establish a community and school in a house given by Mrs. Smith. Other vocations came swiftly in both Missouri and Louisiana. In 1825, another house, St. Michael, was opened in Louisiana, on the Mississippi River closer to New Orleans. In 1827, another house and school were opened in the city of St. Louis, the “City House.” The next year, they were able to return to St. Charles after a ten-year absence, under the intrepid leadership of Lucille Mathevon, who thirteen years later would be the pioneer leader of the Potawatomi mission. The same year, 1828, another venture was undertaken in Louisiana at LaFourche, where a small group of Loretto sisters needed someone else to take over the foundation. Again, it was Bishop Dubourg who encourage the Society to undertake the effort. Unfortunately, this foundation lasted only four years and had to close in 1832.

In the year 1830, therefore, twelve years after the original band arrived, there were six foundations, three in Missouri and three in Louisiana, staffed by forty-five RSCJ, only nineteen of whom were from Europe. In addition to the forty-five professed religious, there were twenty-three novices in both states.

Philippine’s dream had always been to be with the Native Americans, and that dream was continually frustrated. For a brief time, from 1827 probably for about four years, while Philippine was superior at the City House, there was an attempt at a boarding school for Indian girls at Florissant, parallel to a boarding school for Indian boys at the Jesuit house a few miles away. It could not last; by that time, nearly all Native Americans had been pushed farther west and would not send their children so far away.

The dream persisted, and finally in 1841, permission was given for a small group to go west to Sugar Creek, Kansas, where the Jesuits had begun in 1838 a mission with the Potawatomi, forced there from their homes in Indiana on the “Trail of Death.” The group of three RSCJ was preparing, led by Lucille Mathevon from St. Charles. Only through the insistence of the priest leader, Fr. Verhaegen, was the elderly Philippine brought along. Her residence there lasted only a year because of her failing health, and she was brought back to St. Charles where she spent the last ten years of her life. Meanwhile, when the Potawatomi were forced by the government in 1848 to move once again from the mission at Sugar Creek farther west to St. Marys, the RSCJ went with them. The mission, led by fearless Lucille Mathevon, persisted until 1879. It fell to Susannah Boudreau, then superior vicar in St. Louis, to close the mission, the hardest thing she ever had to do, she said. But from its ashes rose another venture, for the next year, a new foundation at Timaru, New Zealand, was possible from St. Louis because of the sacrifice.

A year after the foundation at Sugar Creek, the Society expanded northeast into New York under the leadership of Mary Ann Aloysia Hardey, superior at St. Michael in Louisiana, who would from there carry it to Canada, Cuba, and beyond.