Biography
Mother Alphonsa was born on May 20, 1851 to Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife Sophia Hawthorne, and baptised as Rose Hawthorne. She lived in Massachusetts, Liverpool, England, then London, Paris, Rome, and Florence, Italy. The family returned to Concord, Massachusetts in 1860. Her mother and the family moved to Germany, then England. She married author George Parsons Lathrop in 1871; both converted to Roman Catholicism in 1891. In 1876, the couple had a son, Francis, who died of diphtheria at the age of five. Afterwards Rose and George separated permanently in 1895.
After her father's death in 1864, she tried to become an author, like him. She wrote book of poems, Along the Shore, which was published in 1888. She later decided to rededicate her life to restoring her family's reputation after her brother's illegal activities and prostitution attempts.
She was known for her service near and within New York City, caring for impoverished cancer by founding St. Rose's Free Home for Incurable Cancer in the Lower East Side. After George's death in 1898, she became a nun, and was inspired by "The New Colossus", a poem penned by her close friend Emma Lazarus, to found a community of Dominican religious, now known as the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne.
Rose Hawthorne Lathrop was awarded an honorary Master of Arts (postgraduate) from Bowdoin College in 1925. She died a year later on July 9, 1926. In 2003, Edward Egan, Cardinal Archbishop of the Archdiocese of New York approved the movement for Lathrop's canonization. She now has the title "Servant of God" in the Catholic Church.
Read more about this topic: Mother Mary Alphonsa
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every mans life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
—James Boswell (174095)
“A biography is like a handshake down the years, that can become an arm-wrestle.”
—Richard Holmes (b. 1945)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, memoirs to serve for a history, which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)