Roman Relations with: Henriette Díaz DeLille, SSF (March 11, 1813[1] – November 17, 1862) was a Louisiana Creole of color and Catholic religious sister from New Orleans.

Trained by her mother in French literature, music, and dancing, Henriette was groomed to find a white, wealthy male partner in the plaçage system, which was a type of common-law marriage.

As a young mixed-race woman, under her mother's watchful eye, Henriette attended many quadroon balls, a chief element of their social world.

She became an outspoken opponent of plaçage, in which generally young, white French or American men had extended relationships or common-law marriages with free women of color.

The men entered into contracts with the mothers of the young women of color, promising support and sometimes education of their mixed-race children, as well as financial settlements.

During documentation of the beatification process for DeLille, the congregation found funeral records from the 1820s "that suggested that as a teenager, she may have given birth to two sons, each named Henry Bocno.

The archdiocesan archivist Charles Nolan said in 2005 that, even if DeLille "had given birth to two children out of wedlock, it happened two years before her confirmation in 1834".

[7] Her biographer, Benedictine priest Cyprian Davis, said that her confirmation showed her increased commitment to God, as did her life in the following years.

He felt that his sister's activities within the Créole community could expose his partial African ancestry to his white associates.

Estranged from Henriette, he moved with his wife and children to a small Créole of color community in Iberia Parish, Louisiana.

They were also made by him to take private rather than public vows, such that there is debate as to whether DeLille was ever a fully recognized religious sister during her life.

[8] DeLille died on Sunday, November 16, 1862, at the age of 49, during the American Civil War, when the city was occupied by Union troops.

[8] By 1909, the Holy Family Sisters had grown to 150 members; it operated parochial schools in New Orleans that served 1,300 students.

In this period, Louisiana had disenfranchised most African Americans by raising barriers to voter registration, and it imposed legal segregation of public facilities, including schools.

In 1988, her congregation opened the cause for her beatification with the Holy See (a first for an African American) and DeLille was given the title of Servant of God by the pope.