St. Rose Philippine Duchesne

St. Rose Philippine Duchesne (29 August 1769 – 18 November 1852) was born at Grenoble, France, and entered the Visitation nuns as a young woman, only to see her convent dispersed during the French Revolution. During those years she cared for prisoners, the sick, and hunted priests. After the Revolution she joined the newly founded Society of the Sacred Heart under St. Madeleine Sophie Barat, longing all the while to serve in the foreign missions.

In 1818, at nearly fifty, she was sent to the United States and settled in Missouri, where she founded the first free school west of the Mississippi at St. Charles and established convents, schools, and orphanages on the American frontier amid great hardship and poverty. In her seventies she at last fulfilled a lifelong dream, going to live among the Potawatomi people in Kansas, who, moved by her constant prayer, called her "the woman who prays always." She died in 1852 and was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1988, a patron of pioneers and of those who persevere against opposition.