St. Rose Philippine Duchesne

Friday, November 18th, was the Memorial of St. Rose Philippine Duchesne. She is the only canonized saint to live in Kansas. At morning Mass on her feast day the priest reminded me that the place where she lived is in our Archdiocese. I realized that I had often heard of the Shrine at Mound City, KS and had always wanted to go there. Being that I was on break from seminary, I decided I would make a pilgrimage.

I went first to the Shrine of St. Rose Philippine Duchesne in Mound City. This Church was built in 1941, the year that Rose Philippine Duchesne was Beatified. It has some simple stained glass windows that depict various moments in her life. She joined the convent in France when she was 17, but then had to leave the country because of the French Revolution. Upon coming to the United States, she settled near St. Louis in St. Charles, MO. She spend most of her life there, but all her life she always wanted to be a missionary to work with the Native Americans. At the age of 71 she got her wish and came to the Sugar Creek Indian Reservation in Kansas to work with the Jesuits at St. Mary’s Mission.

After seeing the shrine, I went out to see the site of the Mission. It’s well off the beaten path about 10 miles from Mound City and even today is in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately, when the Mission closed in 1849 they felt they had to burn all the buildings to prevent desecration. So, only some stone foundations are left. At the shrine in Mound City the nice ladies of the parish told me that I should come back later because Archbishop Naumann was coming to have dinner and celebrate Mass. What a great surprise! So, I had some time to kill out at the Mission site. I took a hike through the woods and visited all the monuments. As the sun was going down I still had some time and so I sat down on a picnic table right at the spot where the log chapel used to stand and I chanted Evening Prayer.

It was really nice to be all alone there with the woods in front of me and the open Kansas prairie behind me. I imagined all the holy people that had spent their lives in this place and had prayed Evening Prayer right where I was. I could almost feel their presence as the sounds of the Psalms echoed through the trees that had so often heard these words. What love these pioneer missionaries must have had to leave St. Louis to come to the middle of nowhere in the Kansas Territory with a log cabin for a convent. They loved God and they loved the people, the people of Kansas. As I finished my prayer, I prayed especially to St. Rose Philippine Duchesne that she would stir up the love in me for the people of Kansas like she had. She loved the people of Kansas enough to travel in a wagon at the age of 71 to live in a log cabin in the middle of nowhere to tell Indians who didn’t speak her language how much Jesus loved them. That’s the kind of love a priest has got to have. You have to love God enough to do anything he asks and you have to love the people enough to go anywhere to be with them and to serve them. St. Rose Philippine Duchesne, pray for us, pray for the Church in Kansas.

The Shrine in Mound City, Sacred Heart Church

The Mission Site

The Ruins of St. Rose Philippine Duchesne’s House

Site of the Original Chapel with Modern Altar