The venerable Rose Hawthorne

Little Rose Hawthorne

All this church and cathedral visiting rubbed off on little Rose, Nathaniel Hawthorne's daughter. Just three years old when she arrived in Britain, she spent the next seven years in Europe, travelling - a vagabond lifestyle - and wherever they went they visited churches and cathedrals. Who would have thought that she would be slated for sainthood?

Una, Julian and Rose Hawthorne

At age ten she returned to the United States. At twenty, Rose married George Parsons Lathrop and settled in Boston where he drank and she wrote short stories.  After their child Francis died of diphtheria at the age of five George drank more and the couple separated.

The separation was approved by the Catholic Church, which is important later in the story.  Rose lived alone and started to work with patients with cancer.  George died in 1898 and Rose became a Dominican sister, adopting the name Mother Mary Alphonsa, establishing the Dominican Congregation of St Rose of Lima, aka the Servants of Relief for Incurable Cancer.  A hospice was founded at Hawthorne in New York.   Over to the website of the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne - do read this, it is inspiring, especially considering that at the time Rose was involved, as a pioneer of the hospice movement, cancer was thought to be a contagious disease and those with cancer considered pariahs:

Rose was forty-five years old when she enrolled herself in a nurses’ training course at the New York Cancer Hospital.  What prompted her to take this step was the description of a poor seamstress related to her by Father Young.   The seamstress became afflicted with cancer, the dreaded disease of the day, and unable to maintain an income or rely on family to care for her was sent to Blackwell’s Island, the city’s site of prisons and sanitariums, to die in an almshouse devoid of medical or skilled nursing care.  While questioning who should be responsible for such poor souls she realized:  “A fire was then lighted in my heart, where it still burns. . . I set my whole being to endeavor to bring consolation to the cancerous poor.”

After completing the nurses’ course, she took a streetcar downtown getting off in the most destitute area of the City, the Lower East Side.    She rented rooms in a cold water flat near Grant Street; then sought permission from the office of the commissioner of health and charities stating her purpose clearly although without a documented plan or an outline of financial support.   Surprisingly she received approval from the official on duty.  Her next battle was to win the trust of the people she sought to serve.

 
From the start her purpose was to care for the poor afflicted with cancer and to obtain the means and ways to do this; however as she set out to serve she found herself confronted with many charitable tasks for other needs as well. She did housework and served food to the children of young mothers with consumption.  She paid the rent for other young widows with small children.  Elderly men and women came to her with leg ulcers.  Gradually she won the approval of her poor neighbors; and finally, after a homeless woman with cancer of the face asked to live with her in her clean but impoverished flat, she realized that she could: “take the lowest class both in poverty and suffering (the cancerous poor) and put them in such a condition, that if our Lord knocked at the door we would not be ashamed to show what we had done.”

While this work took up a great portion of her strength and time, she records in her diary daily Mass attendance, frequent confession, the recitation of litanies and novenas, and spiritual direction.  She also managed to complete her book Memories of Hawthorne as well as make appeals in the newspapers of the day.  It was through one of these appeals that Alice Huber, an art student and daughter of a Kentucky physician came to assist her and become her companion in religious life.

In February of 1899 a young Dominican, Father Clement Thuente, O.P  from Saint Vincent Ferrer Priory paid Mrs. Lathrop a visit as she nursed one of his poor parishioners.   Impressed with the work of Rose and her companions and inspired by a small Statue of Saint Rose of Lima in their tenement dwelling, he pledged his spiritual support and guidance and encouraged them to become Dominican Tertiaries.

By May of 1899, Rose had been a widow for a full year. With Alice Huber and the financial support of influential New Yorkers, she acquired a house on Cherry Street where she lived and cared for fifteen poor cancerous women.  Their establishment, St Rose’s Free Home for Incurable Cancer, was dedicated to St. Rose of Lima.     From 1896, the first days of her work on the Lower East Side, Mrs. Lathrop sought the approval of Archbishop Michael A. Corrigan.  On September 14, 1899 he granted Father Thuente permission to receive Rose and Alice as Dominican Tertiaries.  Father Theunte continued to prepare the women for religious life amidst their exhausting work.

In November 1900 Archbishop Corrigan surprised Father Thuente by his approval of December 8, of the same year as the founding day for the new community of Dominican Sisters:  “You have passed through a long, hard novitiate and I am going to give you permission to wear the Dominican Habit, pronounce your first vows and form a Community.”

From this beginning the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, Congregation of Saint Rose of Lima have revered Mother Alphonsa as their foundress and intercessor.  Her vision has sustained them as they have extended their care in the establishment of seven nursing facilities in six different states, all owned and operated by the community.    Thousands of the poor with cancer have been cared for in this way and always it was Mother Alphonsa’s example and teaching about the religious life that has been handed down from generation to generation.  All patients are cared for free of charge without any government subsidies.  Through Mother Alphonsa’s carefully outlined directives the Community to this day is wonderfully sustained financially through the providence of God.

For thirty years Mother Alphonsa’s life, dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, was at the service of the poor.  She placed herself “at the foot of the cross alongside our Blessed Mother”  and thus became a servant of those afflicted with incurable cancer.  She died July 9, 1926 at Rosary Hill Home, Hawthorne, New York, in the Motherhouse of the Congregation.

So what's this about sainthood?  The process goes something like this.  

• First you have to wait five years after the death of the potential saint.  
• Then the bishop of the diocese where the person died starts an investigation into their life, to see if the person can be justifiably termed "a servant of God". 
• This is followed by the Congregation of the Causes of Saints investigating the candidate's holiness; if you get through this round you're venerable. 
• Next miracles have to be verified leading to beatification.  
• For full canonisation a second miracle, attributable to prayer must be demonstrated.

"In April 2013 the Archdiocese of New York concluded the Diocesan phase of the Cause and turned over the official copies of the documents to the Congregation of Causes of Saints for their review.

 

On March 4, 2014, the Congregation of the Causes of Saints released the Decree of Validity for the Diocesan Acts in the Cause of Rose Hawthorne."

Fr. Maurizio Tagliaferri was appointed Relator for the cause of Mother Hawthorne, with responsibility for writing the Positio [short for the Latin positio super virtutibis - position of the virtues - documents used in the process by which a person is declared venerable].

NEWSFLASH / UPDATE / NEWSFLASH / UPDATE / NEWSFLASH / UPDATE

Declared Venerable: On March 14, 2024, Pope Francis authorized the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints to promulgate the decree on her heroic virtues. This official act concluded the review of the Positio—the document for which Fr. Maurizio Tagliaferri was responsible—and formally designated her as Venerable.

Nathaniel's little girl is on her way to sainthood.  

She just needs a miracle. If you wish to help the daughter of a former US Consul to Liverpool, little Rosie from the Rock, become a saint, here is the prayer to use. 

Prayer for the Canonization of Rose Hawthorne
(Mother Mary Alphonsa, O.P.)

Lord God, in your special love for the sick, the poor and the lonely, you raised up Rose Hawthorne (Mother Mary Alphonsa) to be the servant of those afflicted with incurable cancer with no one to care for them. In serving the outcast and the abandoned, she strove to see in them the face of your Son. In her eyes, those in need were always "Christ's Poor."

Grant that her example of selfless charity and her courage in the face of great obstacles will inspire us to be generous in our service of neighbor. We humbly ask that you glorify your servant, Rose Hawthorne, on earth according to the designs of your holy will. Through her intercession, grant the favor that I now present: (here make your request) 

Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus have mercy on us!
(3 times)

Our Father

Hail Mary

Glory be to the Father 

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     

This is a poem Rose Hawthorne wrote about her father.

POWER AGAINST POWER.

[Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1864.]

Where spells were wrought he sat alone,
The wizard touching minds of men
Through far-swung avenues of power,
And proudly held the magic pen.

By the dark wall a white Shape gleams,
By morning's light a Shadow falls!
Is it a servant of his brain,
Or Power that to his power calls?

By morning's light the Shadow looms,
And watches with relentless eyes;
In night-gloom holds the glimmering lamp,
While the pen ever slower flies.

By the dark wall it beckons still,
By evening light it darkly stays;
The wizard looks, and his great life
Thrills with the sense of finished days.

A Shape so ghost-like by the sun,
With smiles that chill as dusks descend!
The glancing wizard, stern and pale,
Admits the presence of the End.

Health has forsaken, death is near,
The hand moves slower, eyes grow dim;
The End approaches, and the man
Dreams of no spell for quelling Him.