OUR LADY OF MISSIONS.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16214, 17 May 1918, Page 2

OUR LADY OF MISSIONS.

GOLDEN JUBILEE.

On Saturdav and Sunday the Sisters of Notre Dame des Missions will celebrate the golden jubilee of the foundation. of their convent in High street. Celebrations will commence to-morrow at 2.30 p.m. with a reunion of past pupils and their friends, which will be held in the girls' schoolroom, when congratulatory speeches will bo made and the Sisters will be presented with addresses and a jubileo gift. On Sunday Bishop Brodie will officiate at the Solemn Pontifical High Mass and Thanksgiving, and in the evening will preach a jubilee sermon. The history of the convent is an interesting one. On .February 9th, 1868, the foutt» pioneer Sisters from the Mother House in Lyons arrived in Christchurch. The Order is a teaching one, instituted for educational missions to new countries, and it was in response to an appeal from the Marist Brothers in this city that the Sisters were sent out. These Sisters opened the first Catholic girls' school in Christchurch, with an attendance of "sixty pupils, the wooden building which I housed them being near the site of the present convent. For the first year the school was supported by the Provincial Government, and the r» U pils steadily increased in number. In 1871, by the help of generous benefactors, the Sisters were able' to buy valuable land on which the convent now stands. In a few vears the accommodation of the first convent became altogether inadequate, and it was decided to build a new one, and in June, 1882, the "resent convent, a substantial brick building. was formally opened by Archbishop Redwood. At that date a largo building was thought ambitious, but " so rapidly have the schools and works entrusted to the Sisters grown since then that tho accommodation is very inadequate. At the present moment the Sisters of the Mission in Christchurch have nearly 900. children under their carc. 'They have five schools in tho city and suburbs,, a girls' college, as well as a. large boarding school, and branch schools in Addington, Hal swell, Woolston, and Lower High street. For some time past they have been endeavouring to build a training school for their teachers. The Christchurch convent is the New Zealand Mother House of the Order, and contains the novitiate, where young Sisters are trained for the schools and other works throughout New Zealand. . There are twentytwo convents of the Order in the Dominion. At Nelson, besides the other schools, the Sisters have a large orphanage, and in Napier a boarding school, for Maori girls, who avail themselves of the Government system of scholarships for Native children.

The Kinema Commission, set up by the National Council of Public Morais in Great Britain, .has appointed an expert educational committee to consider the- educational value of the kinema. Tho investigation, will include a "psychological .investigation of the durability of kinema impressions on school children," the possibilities of the kinema in ' cultivating the ideals of individual and social conduct,- taste,- and imagination, and tjie best means of correlating its work. with that of the school. The Board of Education Jlas promised to allow an official to help in an advisory capacity.