Rose Hawthorne Declared Venerable

With great joy, we share with you the news that Servant of God Rose Hawthorne (Mother Mary Alphonsa) has been declared Venerable. This is the Church’s declaration that she lived a life of heroic virtue worthy of honor and imitation. The Congregation of Saints will now examine the miracles reported due to her intercession, after which she may be Beatified and named Blessed.

Venerable Rose Hawthorne was the daughter of novelist and short-story writer, Nathaniel Hawthorne. She and her husband, George Lathrop, converted to Catholicism, but after the death of their young son George’s alcoholism led to violent behavior and they eventually separated. She moved to New York City to dedicate herself to charitable work, studied to become a nurse, and cared for the poor afflicted with incurable cancer.  After her husband died, she professed religious vows and became known as Mother Mary Alphonsa as she founded the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, the Congregation of Saint Rose of Lima. She established two homes where the sisters cared for the poor without charge, St. Rose’s in Manhattan and Rosary Hill in Hawthorne, where she died in 1926. You can read more about her life and the continued work of the Hawthorne Sisters at hawthorne-dominicans.org/brief-biography.html.

When Rose chose to become a nurse she trained at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, then called New York Cancer Hospital. It is a great privilege to share our history with her. May the example of her life and heroic virtue be an inspiration and example to us all, and particularly to the nurses and physicians of MSKCC.

We invite you to learn more about this remarkable woman who is on the path to sainthood, to ask for her intercession in your needs, and to pray that she may be beatified soon so that many will find encouragement and inspiration in her.