Father Corapi's Biography

   In the persecution he boldly encouraged the faithful to constancy and, being seized, baffled the prefect at his first examination and was committed to prison. At a second appearance in court, his flesh was torn first with whips, then with hooks after which he was cast into the dungeon with Zachaeus and put in like manner in the stocks. In a third examination they were both condemned to die, and were beheaded together on November 17, 303.

We know nothing of these martyrs beyond what Eusebius has recorded in his Martyrs of Palestine, bk I, ch. 5. See CMH., pp. 604—605.

These martyrs were considered of sufficient importance to warrant their being accorded a proper office in the Mozarabic liturgy, and it is often said that they suffered under Diocletian but there is no agreement within a hundred years or more as to when they lived and died. In his Memorial of the Saints St Eulogius says they belonged to Cordova and were brother and sister. Having been de­nounced as Christians they were committed to prison, and beaten and tortured to induce them to apostatize. They were eventually put to death in the amphi­theatre, Acisclus by beheading and Victoria by piercing with arrows. The matron Minciana, at her country-house, at which many martyrs under the Arab persecution were buried, buried their bodies where later a church was built.

Although the medieval passio (printed in Florez, España Sagrada, vol. x, pp. 485—491) is no better than a pious fiction, and there seems to he no warrant for the existence of any such person as Victoria, Acisclus was an unquestionably genuine martyr. He is mentioned by Prudentius, and entered in the Hieronymianum (see CMH., pp. 606—607) under November 18, with the curious addition that “on this day roses are gathered”. His name also occurs in a Spanish inscription of the early sixth century referring to relics, as noted in J. Vives, Inscripciones cristianas de la España romana y visigoda (1942), no. 316.

It was a much-troubled age in Gaul, and Tours was a particularly troubled diocese. After three years of war at the beginning of St Gregory’s episcopate it came into the hands of King Chilperic, who was very averse from the new bishop, and Gregory consequently had to deal with powerful enemies.

He gave sanctuary to Chilperic’s son Meroveus, in defiance of the stepmother Fredegund, and firmly supported St Praetextatus of Rouen whom Chilperic summoned on a charge of having blessed the marriage of Meroveus with his step-aunt Brunhilda.

Then one Leudastis, whom Gregory had caused to be removed from the countship of Tours as unworthy, accused him to the king of political disloyalty and of having slandered Queen Fredegund. He was accordingly arraigned before a council, wherein he purged himself of the charge on oath and behaved with such propriety that the bishops acquitted him and ordered Leudastis to be punished as a false witness.

   Chilperic, like many another monarch of those times, fancied himself as a theologian, and here again St Gregory came into conflict with him, for he could not dissimulate that the royal theology was bad and the manner in which it was set out even worse. Chilperic, however, died in 584 and Childebert II held first by Guntram of Burgundy and then Tours.  These sovereigns were friendly to Gregory and he was able to go on unhampered with the varied work of his diocese and with his writings.

Faith and good works were much increased in Tours under Gregory’s adminis­tration. He rebuilt his cathedral and several other churches, and he brought over a number of heretics to unity of faith, though he was no great theologian. St Odo of Cluny extols his humility, zeal for religion and charity towards all, especially his enemies. Several miracles are ascribed to St Gregory of Tours, which he attributed to the intercession of St Martin and other saints whose relics he always carried about him.

Though Gregory was one of the most effective of the Merovingian bishops, he is best remembered today as a historian and hagiographer. His History of the Franks is an original source for the early history of the French monarchy and gives a great deal of information about himself. His books “of the Glory of the Mar­tyrs” and of other saints, “of the Glory of the Confessors”, and “of the Lives of the Fathers” are less valuable as history. He was writing according to the taste of his day, and an excessive preponderance is given to legends and marvels, marvels of which he was only occasionally critical. As Alban Butler moderately puts it, “In his ample collections of miracles he seems often to have given credit to popular reports”.

baptized by St. Paulinus; “that not only ordinary people, but also kings and princes sometimes asked and accepted her advice. And she obliged those who were under her direction to attend much to reading the Holy Scriptures and to exercise themselves freely in works of righteousness in order that many there might be found fit for ecclesiastical duties and to minister at the altar.”  b. 614

680 ST HILDA, ABBESS OF WHITBY, VIRGIN
The cultus of this great abbess must have been recognized almost at once after her death, for her name appears in the calendar of St Willibrord, written at the beginning of the eighth century. Hilda (Hild) was the daughter of Hereric, nephew of St Edwin, King of Northumbria, and St Paulinus baptized her together with that prince, when she was thirteen years old. The first thirty-three years of her life, says St Bede, “she spent living most nobly in the secular state and more nobly dedicated the remaining half to the Lord as a nun”. She went into the kingdom of the East Angles, where her cousin, King Anna, reigned her idea was to retire to the monastery of Chelles in France, where her sister Hereswitha served God.
   But St Aidan prevailed upon Hilda to return to Northumberland, where he settled her in a small nunnery upon the River Wear. Then she was made abbess of Heiu’s double monastery at Hartlepool. Here her first business was to bring better order to the house, in accordance with her innate wisdom and love for the service of God.
  Some years later St Hilda was transferred to Streaneshalch (afterwards called Whitby), either to found a new abbey or to reform an old one. This again was a double monastery of monks and nuns, who lived entirely apart but sang the office together in church.  As was usual in such houses, the abbess was in supreme charge, except where strictly spiritual matters were concerned. St Hilda filled this office so well, writes Bede, “that not only ordinary people, but also kings and princes sometimes asked and accepted her advice. And she obliged those who were under her direction to attend much to reading the Holy Scriptures and to exercise themselves freely in works of righteousness in order that many there might be found fit for ecclesiastical duties and to minister at the altar.”
   Several of her monks became bishops, including St John of Beverley. The poet Caedmon was a servant of the monastery, and took the habit there at Hilda’s suggestion he also was locally commemorated as a saint, and she was followed in her office by St Elfleda, her pupil.

The success of St Hilda’s rule and the love which she inspired in her subjects maybe clearly seen in the pages of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History. Probably, too, it was the reputation of the house as well as the convenience of its situation that caused Whitby Abbey to be selected as the place for the great synod of 664, summoned to decide on what day Easter should he observed and other vexed questions. St Hilda and her religious sided with the Scots in favour of the Celtic customs, but St Wilfrid and the other party triumphed and King Oswy ordered the Roman customs to be observed in Northumbria. Doubtless St Hilda obeyed this decision of the synod, but perhaps was vexed by St Wilfrid’s part in it, for later she strongly supported St Theodore of Canterbury against him in the matter of the northern dioceses.
   Seven years before her death St Hilda contracted a sickness which never again left her but all the time, "she never failed either to return thanks to her Maker or publicly, or privately, to instruct those under her care. By her own example

The monastery of Whitby *{* Alban Butler says in a footnote The common people formerly imagined that St Hilda changed serpents into stones in this place, because on the face of the cliff were found abundance of stones, which have the appearance of serpents or snakes rolled up, or in their coil, but without heads which are natural stones called Ammonites, and are still plentiful there.” Cf. St Keyne at Keynsham (October 8).} was destroyed by the Danes, when the relics of St Hilda were either lost or translated to a place unknown. Her feast is now kept in the diocese of Middlesbrough.

We know little more of St Hilda than what is told us in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History but see the notes in C. Plummer’s edition, and also Howorth, The Golden Days of the Early English Church, vol. iii, pp. 186—195 and passim. Cf. Stanton, Menology, pp. 551—552.

1200 St. Hugh of Lincoln known for his wisdom and justice abbot of the first English Carthusian monastery, which was built by King Henry II as part of his penance for the murder of Thomas Becket; St Hugh in his little garden was a special attraction to squirrels and birds, of whom he was very fond and over whom he had consider­able power. {In pictorial representations of St Hugh his emblem is generally a swan. His chaplain and biographer assures us that when a bishop he had a pet wild swan at Stow, one of his manors, which would feed from his hand, follow him about and keep guard over his bed, so that it was impossible for anyone to approach the bishop without being attacked by it Giraldus Cambrensis confirms these statements.} In the epidemic of Jew-baiting, which broke out in England at the time of the Third Crusade St, Hugh was conspicuous in defence of those persecuted. In his own cathedral at Lincoln, at Stamford, and again at Northampton, he single-handed faced armed and angry mobs, and cowed and cajoled them into sparing their hated victims: When his chancellor pointed out to him that St Martin had cured leprosy by his touch, St Hugh answered, “St Martin’s kiss healed the leper’s flesh; but their kiss heals my soul”.

In Británnia sancti Hugónis Epíscopi, qui, ex Mónacho Carthusiáno ad Ecclésiam Lincolniénsem regéndam vocátus, multis cláruit miráculis, et sancto fine quiévit.
    In England, St. Hugh, bishop, who was called to rule the church of Lincoln.  He ended his holy life in peace, renowned for many miracles.

He had passed ten years in his solitary cell when the office of procurator of the monastery was committed to him, which charge he had held for about seven years when, at the age of forty, his life took an abrupt turn.

King Henry II of England founded, as part of his penance for the murder of St Thomas Becket, the first house of Carthusian monks in England, at Witham in Somersetshire; but so great difficulties occurred in the undertaking under the two first priors that the monastery could not be settled. The king, therefore, sent Reginald, Bishop of Bath, to the Grande Chartreuse, to desire that the holy monk Hugh, who had been recommended by a French nobleman, might be sent over to take upon him the government of this monastery. After much debating in the house it was determined that it became not Christian charity so to confine their solicitude to one family as to refuse what was required for the benefit of others, and, though the saint protested that he was most unfit for the charge, he was ordered by the chapter to accompany the deputies to England. At Witham he found that the monastic buildings had not even been begun, and that no provision had been made for the compensation of those who had been, or would have to be, evicted from their lands and tenements to make room for the monks. St Hugh refused to undertake his office until the king had compensated these people, “down to the last penny”. The work was then carried on successfully till it was nearing completion, and then was held up again because Henry had not paid the bills, except in promises. St Hugh’s tact overcame this difficulty and the first English charterhouse was at last in being. Hugh by his humility and meekness of manner and the sanctity of his life gained the hearts of the enemies of the foundation and men began to relish their close solitude and to consecrate themselves to God under the discipline of the saints.

As with many another exemplary monk, the reputation of Hugh’s goodness and abilities spread far beyond the cloister walls, and in particular King Henry never went hunting in his forest of Frome-Selwood without visiting the prior of Witham. The extent to which he trusted in Hugh is thus illustrated. As the king returned with his army from Normandy to England he was in great danger at sea in a furious storm. Their safety seemed despaired of, when the king cried aloud, “0 God whom the prior of Witham so truly serves, through his merits and intercession look with pity on our distress, in spite of our sins which deserve thy judgements”. Almost at once the wind abated and the voyage was completed without mishap, the king’s confidence in St Hugh being naturally confirmed and increased.

   St Hugh did not hesitate to remonstrate with his royal patron upon matters which required amendment, among which was his habit of keeping sees vacant in order to draw their revenues. A scandalous example was Lincoln, which, with an interval of eighteen months, had no bishop for nearly eighteen years. At a council held at Eynsham Abbey in 1186 order was given to the dean and chapter to elect a pastor, and the election fell upon St Hugh—under pressure from king and primate. His objections were not admitted, and he was obliged by the authority of the prior of the Grande Chartreuse to drop the strong opposition, which he had made, and to receive episcopal consecration. After so long a vacancy the diocese of Lincoln was naturally in dire need of reform, and St Hugh at once engaged several priests of learning and piety to be his assistants and he employed all the authority which his office gave him in restoring ecclesiastical discipline amongst his clergy. By sermons and private exhortations he laboured to quicken in all men the spirit of faith, and in ordinary conversation equally incited others to divine love. But he was full of talk and fun (which often took the form of puns), cheerful, enthusiastic and easily roused, as Giraldus Cambrensis tells us. In administering the sacraments or consecrating churches he sometimes spent whole days, beginning before daybreak and persevering into the night, without allowing himself rest or food. He was particularly strict against the exaction of improper fees by the clergy, following his own example at his enthronization when he refused an honor­arium to the archdeacon of Canterbury who had performed the office. He was deeply devoted to his poor and sick children, and would visit the leper-houses and wait upon the inmates. When his chancellor pointed out to him that St Martin had cured leprosy by his touch, St Hugh answered, “St Martin’s kiss healed the leper’s flesh; but their kiss heals my soul”. He took great pleasure in children and babies, and his biographer (who was the bishop’s chaplain) tells several charming stories illustrative of this trait, as well as miracles done in favour of little ones.

In the epidemic of Jew-baiting, which broke out in England at the time of the Third Crusade St, Hugh was conspicuous in defence of those persecuted. In his own cathedral at Lincoln, at Stamford, and again at Northampton, he single-handed faced armed and angry mobs, and cowed and cajoled them into sparing their hated victims. His concern for justice on behalf of his own people is illus­trated by his actions in regard to the royal forest-laws. The foresters and their agents “ hunt the poor as if they were wild animals and devour them as their prey” wrote Peter of Blois, a contemporary. Hugh had had trouble with them at Witham, and so soon as a company of these rangers had, upon a slight occasion, laid hands on a subject of the church of Lincoln, he, after due summons, excommunicated the head of them. This action King Henry took very ill. However, he dissembled his resentment, and soon after by letter requested of the bishop a prebend, then vacant in the church of Lincoln, in favour of one of his courtiers. St Hugh, having read the petition, returned answer by the messenger, “These places are to be conferred upon clerics, not upon courtiers. The king does not lack means to reward his servants.” The king of course was more furious than ever, and sent for St Hugh, who found him sitting with his court in the grounds of Woodstock castle. By Henry’s order nobody took any notice of the bishop, and he went on sewing a bandage round a cut finger. St Hugh watched him for a time and then said sweetly, “Now, you know, you look exactly like your kinsfolk at Falaise” *{*Henry’s great-grandfather, William the Conqueror, was the natural son of Robert of Normandy and the daughter of a furrier and glove-maker of Falaise.}

   This bold sally broke down the king’s ill humour, and he listened quietly while Hugh demonstrated how in the whole affair he had regard purely to the service of God and to his episcopal duty. The king was, or pretended to be, perfectly satisfied. The ranger showed himself penitent and was absolved by the bishop, and from that time became his steady friend.

  St Hugh had found his cathedral in ruins, and soon began its rebuilding, on which he sometimes worked with his own hands. Some of the actual magnificent building there is due to Hugh, and on his deathbed he gave final instructions to the master-builder, Geoffrey de Noiers. All St Hugh’s great achievements in activity were grounded in contem­plation, and it was his custom to retire once a year to his beloved cloister at Witham, and there pass some time observing the common rule, without any difference but that of wearing the episcopal ring on his finger.
St Hugh had such a reputation for justice in his judicial capacity that two poor orphans in a cause appealed to Rome and asked that the Bishop of Lincoln might judge the case, and he exercised this quality in great things and in small. When in 1197 King Richard I wanted the bishops as well as the barons to subsidize his war with Philip Augustus for twelve months, St Hugh maintained that his see was only liable to assist in home-defence. Only Bishop Herbert of Salisbury supported him, and he at once had all his goods confiscated. Hugh stood out, rebuked the king to his face for his unjust oppression and other ill deeds, and triumphed. But whereas he calmed Henry’s rage with a joke, he overcame Richard by a kiss. Stubbs, the constitutional historian, says that this “is the first clear case of the refusal of a money-grant demanded directly by the Crown, and a most valuable precedent for future times”. Just before his contest with the king, St Hugh had been strengthened in his faith and duty by a vision granted to a young cleric of our Lord, in the likeness of a tiny child, held in the saint’s hands at the consecration at Mass. This youth had previously been supernaturally warned to go to the Bishop of Lincoln and tell him to draw the attention of the Archbishop of Canterbury to the lamentable laxity of many of the English clergy a vision at Mass was promised in confirmation. This was by no means the only time that St Hugh was encouraged and consoled in his difficult labours by clear marks of the help of Heaven, whether by the healing of the sick, the driving out of evil spirits or the conversion of hardened sinners.
After the death of Richard I, who had said of Hugh that “if all the prelates of the Church were like him, there is not a king in Christendom who would dare to raise his head in the presence of a bishop,” and the coronation of his successor, King John sent St Hugh into France on affairs of state. He visited, among other places, his old home at the Grande Chartreuse and the great abbeys of Cluny and Citeaux, and was everywhere received with joy and veneration, for he was known by reputation all over France as well as England. But his last sickness was now upon him, and on his return he went to pray at St Thomas’s shrine in Canterbury. However, he got worse, and when he was summoned to a national council in London he had to take to his bed at his house in the Old Temple, Holborn (whence “Lincoln’s Inn”), receiving the last anointing on the vigil of the nineteenth anniversary of his episcopal consecration. He lingered on in pain and patience for nearly two months, dying in the evening of November 16, 1200. The body was taken in a sort of triumphal progress to Lincoln, where it was buried in the cathedral amidst universal grief on November 24. There were present beside the primate of all England, fourteen bishops and a hundred abbots, an archbishop from Ireland and another from Dalmatia, a prince, Gruffydd ap Rhys, from South Wales, King William the Lion of Scotland and King John of England—and the Lincoln ghetto was there, bewailing the loss of its protector and a “ true servant of the great God”. Twenty years later Pope Honorius III canonized St Hugh.  His feast is now observed by the Carthusian Order and in several English dioceses; the great charterhouse at Parkminster in Sussex is dedicated in his honour.

1852 BD PHILIPPINE DUCHESNE, VIRGIN
UNDER May 25 herein there is printed an account of St Madeleine Sophie Barat and the foundation of the Society of the Sacred Heart. In the course of it there are references to a certain Mother Duchesne, who introduced the newly established congregation to North America; and this Mother Duchesne was beatified in 1940.
   She was born in 1769, at Grenoble in Dauphiny, her father being the head of a prosperous mercantile family. At her christening she was given the names Rose Philippine, of which the first was a veritable augury, for St Rose of Lima, on the eve of whose feast she was born, was the first canonized saint of the New World. There was nothing especially remarkable about her childhood she had a strong and rather imperious nature (characteristic of her father’s family), she was of a serious disposition, and she early showed interest in history. At the age of eight a Jesuit who had worked in Louisiana and told the Duchesnes stories about the Indians kindled her first enthusiasm for missionary life and the American land. Philippine went to school with the Visitation nuns of Sainte-Marie-d’En-haut and also was taught by a tutor with her cousins the Périers, and she became uncommonly well-educated. Then when she was seventeen, and her parents were looking around for a husband for her, she announced her intention of being a nun; and after some opposition she was allowed to join the community with which she had been at school. Eighteen months later, however, her father forbade her profession—and for a sound reason he did not like the outlook for the future in France. And sure enough, in 1791, the Visitandines of Grenoble were expelled, and Philippine returned to her family, who were now living in the country.

Throughout the years of revolution Philippine did her best to live in a way in all respects befitting a religious. She looked after her family; she tended the sick and confessors of the faith and others in prison, and above all was concerned for the education of children. And then, when the Holy See concluded its concordat with Napoleon in 1801, she was enabled to acquire the buildings of her old convent of Sainte-Marie-d’En-haut. Philippine had always hoped to be instrumental in re-establishing the Visitandine community of which she had been a member, but now she found the undertaking even more difficult than she had expected indeed, it proved to be impossible. On a day in August, 1802—it was in fact the 21st, the feast day of the foundress of the Visitation nuns, St Jane Frances de Chantal— it was decided to abandon the venture ; and a few days later Philippine and another sister were left alone in the convent. Unkind outsiders were not slow to say that it was another example of the “ stiffness “ of the Duchesne character, that Sister Philippine made things difficult in community life. Philippine decided to offer Sainte-Marie-d’En-haut to Mother Barat, who not long before had begun the first house of the Society of the Sacred Heart, at Amiens. The proposal was agreed, and on December 31, 1804, Philippine and four others were admitted as postulants at Sainte-Marie. Thus were brought together, as novice-mistress and as novice, these two souls, “ one of marble, the other of bronze ‘‘, St Madeleine Sophie Barat and Bd Philippine Duchesne. Less than a year later the novice was professed. The months of preparation had seen a growing-together of foundress and aspirant, a better understanding of discipline on the part of the young nun who had been so much “on her own”-perhaps her hardest struggle was to give up personal mortifications and penances at the word of her mother in religion.

Early in 1806 Sainte-Marie-d’En-haut was visited by the abbot of La Trappe, Dom Augustine de Lestrange, who three years before had sent the first Cistercian monks to North America; and this visit served to inflame Bd Philippine’s desire to be a missionary in that land. Nowadays we do not think of the United States as mission territory; but a hundred and forty years ago{1960} far the greater part of that huge country was still unsettled by Europeans, or indeed by anybody; the frontier was only gradually moving west, and the Indians were still a notable proportion of the population. But though Mother Barat approved in principle, it was still to be another twelve years before Mother Duchesne achieved her ambition, years during which the instrument was to be prepared and tempered, both spiritually and in the handling of affairs. At last the appointed time came. Mgr Dubourg, Bishop of Louisiana, called on Mother Barat and asked her to let him have some of her religious as soon as they could be spared from France. She promised to do so, but would perhaps have put the enterprise off indefinitely had it not been for the direct and impetuous intervention of Mother Duchesne. And so, in March 1818, five religious of the Sacred Heart left Bordeaux for the New World.  Mother Duchesne, to her great regret, had been appointed their superioress.

After a trying voyage (“Seasickness is really evil”, wrote Bd Philippine, “It affects the head as well as the stomach, and makes one useless for anything”) the little party landed at New Orleans on May 29, the feast of the Sacred Heart. They went up the Mississippi to Saint Louis, then a town of about 6,ooo inhabitants, in what is now Missouri. Here Mgr Dubourg, who found them a house for their first establishment at Saint Charles, welcomed them: it was a small log cabin. And here, among the children of the poor, was started the first free school west of the Mississippi. The white population was in majority Catholic, and composed of French, Creole, English and others, many of them bi-lingual; the nuns had been studying English ever since they were assigned to America, but Bd Philippine never really mastered the language. Two passing remarks of hers throw light on the sort of people they had to work among: “Some of our pupils have more gowns than chemises or, above all, pocket-handkerchiefs”, and “At Portage-des-Sioux the walls [of the church] were adorned with representations of Bacchus and Venus... put up out of sheer ignorance”. As for the Indians, “We used to entertain the pleasing thought of teaching docile and innocent savages, but the women are idle and given to drink as much as the men”. After a hard winter the bishop decided to move the community to Florissant, nearer Saint Louis. A three-storied brick building was provided, and into this the nuns moved on the two days before Christmas, 1819;

St. Ferdinand's Convent, built in 1819 under the supervision of Mother Duchesne. This convent became the first Mother House of the Ladies of the Sacred Heart outside of France; the site of the first Catholic school for Indian girls in the United States; the first free school for girls west of the Mississippi; and the first novitiate for women in the upper Louisiana Purchase Territory.

Mother Duchesne wrote a vivid account of the bitterly cold rigors of the move, complicated by a cow that ran away. The more commodious residence raised the possibility of starting a novitiate, about which Mgr Dubourg was not too sanguine in view of the independent American character. But the ground was broken when a postulant presented herself to be a lay-sister, and the first American to receive the habit of the Society of the Sacred Heart was clothed on November 22, 1820 her name was Mary Layton.

Old St. Ferdinand's Church,the oldest Catholic church building between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains. St. Ferdinand's served as the focal point of the Catholic Indian Mission movement, begun by Father De la Croix in 1820. Father DeSmet was ordained at St. Ferdinand's in 1827.

Bd Philippine’s last years were spent at Saint Charles, but the tide of her life went out on no gentle ebb. The fortunes of the Society of the Sacred Heart in America did not rise in one unwavering curve of progress; houses that Mother Duchesne had founded and nursed were threatened with dissolution; and for nearly two years correspondence between herself and her deeply loved Mother Barat was not delivered—a mystery never properly cleared up. So, during a prolonged old age of suffering and prayer, Mother Duchesne completed her life of apostleship and self-sacrifice. She died on November 18, 1852. She was eighty-three years old. It was said of her by a contemporary “She was the St Francis of Assisi of the Society. Everything in and about her was stamped with the seal of a crucified life. She would have liked to disappear from the sight of men, and it may indeed be said that no one occupied less space in the world than Madame Duchesne. Her room was a miserable hole with a single window, in which paper supplied the place of some of the panes; her bed was a mattress two inches thick, laid on the ground by night and put away in the day in a cupboard; her only covering at night was an old piece of black stuff with a cross like a pall.” While she lay dead a daguerreotype was taken of Philippine Duchesne, “in case” as was said, “she may one day be canonized”. Less than a century later that day is within sight. This missionary of the American frontier was beatified in 1940, and her feast is kept on November 17.

One of those who listened to Fr. De Smet speak of Mother Duchesne in 1847 made these notes of what he said:
“He said she had climbed all the rungs of the ladder of sanctity, and never had he seen a soul more ardent in love for Our Lord. In his opinion, she rivaled St. Teresa. Never had he known a person who was poorer in all that concerned her private life, and in this she imitated St. Francis of Assisi. Nor a more apostolic soul, eager for the salvation of souls, and he thought St. Francis Xavier had shared with her his zeal for the conversion of the infidels. Ending his talk he said: Now she is on the sorrowful way of Calvary to which old age and infirmities have condemned her, but no matter how hard that road may seem to her, she is climbing it with all the fervor of youth. She has struck deep roots in American soil and they will one day bear an abundant harvest. I should not be surprised if some day she were raised to our altars.” (Callan, Philippine Duchesne, pp. 462-3.) {Cannonized July, 3 1988}