Delille, Henriette (Henriette Díaz)

Impact on the world

Founded a small unrecognized congregation of religious sisters in 1836, later formally established as the Sisters of the Holy Family in 1842, becoming only the second African American to serve as a Catholic religious order's superior general after Mary Lange of Baltimore's Oblate Sisters of Providence; born light-skinned enough to pass as white and pressured by her own family toward the plaçage system of common-law relationships between white men and women of color, Delille deliberately rejected that path on religious grounds and instead devoted her life and entire personal fortune to serving New Orleans's enslaved and free Black population, a decision Pope Benedict XVI recognized in 2010 by declaring her 'Venerable.'

Life & background

Born in New Orleans in 1813 to a free woman of color and a white French father in a common-law arrangement typical of the era's plaçage system, in which white men entered into financially structured relationships with women of color often intended to end once the men married white women, Delille was herself light enough in complexion to pass as white, as her brother Jean reportedly did throughout his life. Raised Catholic and drawn to a strong personal faith, she became an outspoken opponent of the plaçage arrangement her own family expected her to enter, viewing it as a violation of the Catholic sacrament of marriage, and after her mother's 1835 mental health crisis left Delille managing the family's assets, she sold her remaining property in 1836 to found a small, initially unrecognized community of religious sisters alongside seven other young Creole women and one white French woman, caring for the sick, instructing both free and enslaved children and adults, and opening what became America's first Catholic home for the elderly. Because Louisiana's bishop refused to allow women of color to take public religious vows, Delille and her companions took private vows in 1852, with Delille assuming the religious name Mary Theresa, though she was known to everyone simply as Mother Henriette; the congregation gained formal Holy See recognition in 1837 and was renamed the Sisters of the Holy Family in 1842. The order nursed the sick during New Orleans's devastating 1853 and 1897 yellow fever epidemics, and Delille's own will freed an enslaved woman she personally owned named Betsy; she died in 1862 at age 49, with friends attributing her death to a lifetime of poverty and relentless service, just as New Orleans lay under Union military occupation during the Civil War. Her congregation formally opened her cause for beatification in 1988, the first such cause opened for any African American, and Pope Benedict XVI declared her Venerable in 2010, with at least one potential miracle attributed to her intercession still under Vatican investigation as of recent years.

Sources

1. Sisters of the Holy Family); USCCB (On the Road to Sainthood); Diocese of Baton Rouge