An Hour With Mother Henriette DeLille

Born in 1812, Henriette Delille Sarpy was from one of the oldest and affluent racially mixed Catholic Creole families in nineteenth-century New Orleans. Her great-great-grandmother was an African slave brought to Louisiana who subsequently won her freedom. Her great-grandmother, grandmother and mother also had children by white men so Henriette, her mother, and her brother could “pass for white.”

A French missionary nun taught Henriette and her friend Juliette Gaudin. The girls prayed, fed the poor, and taught the Catechism of the Catholic Church to free children of color.

In 1836, when Henriette was 24, she received the sacrament of confirmation and underwent a religious experience. Henriette wrote in her prayer book, “I believe in God. I hope in God. I love. I want to live and die for God.”

Despite being able to “pass for white” and being from an affluent family, Henriette chose to help Creole women of color. Soon after her religious experience, Henriette and Juliette founded a confraternity of pious Creole women. Henriette was chosen as their first leader and from then she was known as Mother Delille. The confraternity received formal recognition from the Vatican the following year, becoming a congregation. In 1842 they changed their name to the Sisters of the Holy Family.

The sisters cared for the sick, helped the poor, and taught the Catechism to slave and free women and girls. They later added an orphanage and boarding school.

Mother Delille died in 1862 and was declared Venerable in 2010.

An Hour With Mother Henriette Delille creates a time of reflection, recollection, learning, contemplation, and prayer. In addition to a short biography, it includes meditations on her spirituality.

Sr. M. Sylvia Thibodeaux, SSF, and Ms. Virginia Gould also contributed to this pamphlet. Sister Thibodeaux received her BA from Seton Hill University and her MA from Antioch Graduate School. She has been a religious sister of the Congregation of the of the Sisters of the Holy Family for more than 60 years. Ms. Gould received her BS from the University of Alabama, and her MA and PhD from Emory University.

Pamphlet. This item is not returnable.