St. Rose Philippine Duchesne

St. Rose Philippine Duchesne was born in 1769 in Grenoble, France. Educated from age 12 at the convent of the Visitation nuns in Grenoble, she joined them in 1788 without the permission or knowledge of her family. In 1804, after the French Revolution, the group was incorporated into the Society of the Sacred Heart under Saint Madeline Sophie Barat.

In 1818, when she was forty-nine years old, Rose was sent to the United States. She founded a boarding school for daughters of pioneers near St. Louis and opened the first free school west of the Missouri. At the age of seventy-one, she began a school for Indians, who soon came to call her "the woman who is always praying." 

She was beatified by Pope Pius XII in 1940 and canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1988. Her Feast Day is November 18.