OSV Kids - March 27 - Saint: Henriette Delille

OSV Kids March 2024
By OSV Kids

March 27 - Saint: Henriette Delille

Henriette Delille (1813-1862) is the first native-born American Creole whose cause for canonization has been accepted. Henriette’s mother and father never married, but they lived together in a relationship called placage, which was common in former slave colonies. In placage, a white man lived with a woman of African, Native American or mixed-race descent. Henriette wanted to join either the Ursuline or Carmelite Sisters, but was refused because she was of mixed race. She therefore founded the Catholic order of the Sisters of the Holy Family in New Orleans for free women of color. She and her sisters operated an orphanage, worked in nursing and with the elderly, and even taught at a time when providing an education for people of various ethnic backgrounds could be punished by prison or even death.

She was declared Venerable by Pope Benedict XVI on March 27, 2010. In her memory pray the following:

Prayer for the Beatification of Venerable Henriette Delille

O good and gracious God, you called Henriette Delille to give herself in service and in love to the slaves and the sick, to the orphan and the aged, to the forgotten and the despised.
Grant that, inspired by her life, we might be renewed in heart and in mind. If it be your will may she one day be raised to the honor of sainthood. By her prayers may we live in harmony and peace, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.