TIMARU CONVENT.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19786, 26 November 1929, Page 8

TIMARU CONVENT.

JUBILEE CELEBRATIONS. The jubilee celebrations of the Sacred i Heart Convent begin to-morrow even- j ing at Timaru. Many visitors, both j clergy and laity, including the Archbishop and the Bishops of Christchureh and Duncdin, will be present. Bishop Cleary, of Auckland, has been prevented from attending through illness. i The Timaru Convent is under the control of the Society of the Sacred Heart —an order of nuns devoted to teaching. The Society has other convents in New Zealand at Island Bay, Wellington, and at Beniuera, Auckland, and in three the methods and spirit of the teaching are the same. i The Society was founded by St. i Madeleine Sophie, one of the modern saints of the Church, whose beatifica- i tion and canonisation both date from j within the last quarter of a century. At the age of twenty she found herself at the head of a new order, and for ! sbcty-five years she controlled the principles and practice of the teaching sisterhood. The system of education which she inaugurated in France a hundred years ago is based on such broad lines that the.School Enle is now, except for minor details, the sane as it was at the outset. The Sisters who began in a very humble way at Timaru fifty years ago came to New Zealand at the invitation of Archbishop Bedwood, then Bishop Bedwood. It is a happy thing that he, now risen to princely rank in the Church, should still be able to join with tbe present congregation of nuns in thanksgiving after fifty years of service. Shortly after the arrival of the first nuns, their Mother Superior, the Beverend Mother Boudreau, fell ill and died. They were left to face initial difficulties and privations without her leadership. The school grew, however, and on the present roll of the Past Pupils' Association many names figure, including those of nuns of various orders, secular teachers of every kind, doctors, nurses, writers, musicians, and an army of women all stamped indelibly with the mark of their old school. The Convent ia part of an organisation which is established in all parts of the world, and between the various i countries a constant interchange of teachers is maintained. The jubilee celebrations begin tomorrow, and will last during tbe following days.