Hace doscientos años, Rosa Filipinia Duchesne se embarcó para cruzar el Atlántico y establecer la Sociedad del Sagrado Corazón y educar a los niños del Nuevo Mundo. Al abrir la primera escuela católica al oeste del Misisipi, la Madre Duchesne, conocida como "la mujer que siempre reza", atravesó fronteras para poner fe, amor y educación en el mundo.
A Life Given In Love: Reflections on Philippine Duchesne, edited by Juliet Mousseau, RSCJ, is now available to order online. This book was original printed in a limited supply and distributed to Sacred Heart communities and schools.
Carol Bialock, RSCJ, is not a traditional nun. She is a poet, an activist and a student of Sufism, and she has spent her life deeply devoted to those in need. And now she is a published author as well, seeing her vivid book of poems, Coral Castles, released by Fernwood Press on her 90th birthday.
Education is at the heart of everything we do as Religious of the Sacred Heart. Untold numbers of people have come to know and experience God’s love through their Sacred Heart education or through relationships with Religious of the Sacred Heart. This issue explores a variety of stories about Sacred Heart schools ministries, RSCJ ministries and the breadth of Sacred Heart education today.
In 1818, Mother Rose Philippine Duchesne, of the newly-founded Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, left France to participate in the missionary expansion of the Catholic Church in the New World, at the request of Bishop Louis William Dubourg, named bishop of “Louisiana.” This vast area, acquired by the United States from France in 1803, extended over a territory of 530,000,000 acres (828,000 square miles), from New Orleans to Canada, including all the lands drained by the vast river system of the Mississippi and the Missouri, the future Midwest of the United States.
During our bicentennial celebrations in 2017 and 2018, our goal was to make Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne better known and to highlight the Society’s internationality.
In this issue of Heart magazine, you will read about our bicentennial events in 2018. Global Service Day and the Frontiers Conference offered international context, and the closing Mass provided joy and glorious music. We also spoke the names of those enslaved by the Society in the 1800s and walked with the Citizen Potawatomi Nation as they remembered a heartbreaking time in their history.
Even though Saint Madeleine Sophie Barat never used the words social justice or justice, peace and the integrity of creation (JPIC), the spirituality and values that she held are the same – the importance of human dignity, right relationships, preventing inequality and respecting God’s creation.
This issue of Heart explores some of the ways our Stuart Center and many individual Religious of the Sacred Heart demonstrate their commitment to JPIC by engaging with issues related to youth, immigration and ecology in their daily lives.
Grave on the Prairie, by Maureen J. Chicoine, RSCJ, is the story of the mission of the Society of the Sacred Heart to the Potawatomi in Kansas. Inaugurated by Philippine Duchesne in 1841, the mission lasted until 1879 when the religious of the Sacred Heart withdrew from Saint Marys, Kansas. The title refers to the grave of the seven RSCJ who died in Kansas.
Karen Olson, RSCJ, has written a life of Philippine for middle school children.The book is liberally illustrated with photos taken by Sister Olson during her travels to places where Philippine lived. The narrative is based on the standard biographies by Louise Callan and Catherine Mooney. It answers actual questions some middle school students posed to Sister Olson about Philippine’s life and personality and about canonization.
