Venerable Henriette Díaz DeLille is one of six Black Americans, including Julia Greeley and Venerable Pierre Toussaint, who is on the path towards officially being recognized as saints in the Roman Catholic Church. Ven. Henriette does not yet have an official feast day, so she is featured here today in celebration of Black History Month.

Mother Henriette was the founder of the Sisters of the Holy Family in the city of New Orleans. She was born in 1813, to a mother who was a free woman of color, Marie-Josèphe. Her mother lived with a man named Jean-Baptiste, in what was known as the plaçage system. Through the plaçage system, white men lived in common-law–as opposed to civil or sacramental–marriages with women of color. Henriette grew up with her siblings in New Orleans’ French Quarter. Her mother raised them Roman Catholic, and educated Henriette to be an accomplished young woman, in preparation for her own marriage to a wealthy patron. But Henriette had different plans for herself. She wanted to bring education to the poor girls of New Orleans and began teaching children around the city when she was still a teenager.

In 1835, Henriette’s mother had a nervous breakdown, and Henriette inherited all her mother’s assets. Henriette set aside enough money to continue caring for her mentally ill mother and then sold all of her mother’s remaining property. With the proceeds of this sale, Henriette began her own religious congregation, which she named the Sisters of the Presentation, later renamed the Sisters of the Holy Family. The Sisters of the Holy Family, to this day, operate schools, nursing homes, and retirement communities for those in need throughout the Southern USA.

Henriette DeLille died in 1862, in the midst of the civil war. Her cause for canonization was opened in 1988, and Pope Benedict XVI declared her “venerable” on March 27, 2010.

Venerable Henriette Díaz DeLille, American witness to holiness—pray for us!