HOME FOR FOUNDLINGS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21546, 18 July 1933, Page 11

HOME FOR FOUNDLINGS

OPENING AT PONSONBY ROMAN CATHOLIC WORK MOTHER AUBERT'S ORDER A charitablo work that will receive widespread sympathy is to be commenced in Auckland this month by the Sisters of Compassion, the Roman Catholic community established in New Zealand nearly 50 years ago by the late Mother Mary Joseph Aubcrt. Within the next week or so the sisters will open in Vermont Street, Ponsonby, a home for foundling infants on similar lines to the one conducted by them in tho Homo of Compassion, Wellington. At the present time 14 infants arc being cared for at the Star of the Sea Orphanage, Howick, and these will bo transferred to tho new home, which is to have accommodation for 25 children. The sisters have undertaken their new work in Auckland at the invitation of Bishop Liston, who has secured for them a fair-sized two-storeyed house owned by tho diocese and adjoining tho Ponsonby parish school in Vermont Street. The bishop has also made himself responsible for the cost of reconditioning tho building for its new use. Grsat Wellington Institution

Tho Sisters of Compassion have a noble record of charitablo work in Wellington. Their foundress, who died in 1926 at the great age of 91, passed licr religious novitiate in St. Mary's Convent, Ponsonby, and afterwards worked for niany years among the Maoris. She founded missions at Jerusalem and Ranana, on the Wanganui River, in 1885, and in 1900, with a capital of she opened a home for incurables in Buckle Street, Wellington. To-day Mother Aubert's foundation conducts the Home of Compassion, Island Bay, in a large range of buildingß, where are housed hundreds of incurable invalids, cripples and foundlings. In the same institution are an officially-recognised training school for nurses of tho order and a fully equipped medical and surgical hospital of 40 beds. The male incurable cases will shortly be moved to a new home that is being built at Silverstroam, in the Hutt Valley. Tho order also conducts a creche in Buckle Street and a home of compassion at Wanganui. In 1910 Mother Aubert established a homo for foundlings in H(|'json Street, Auckland. The work was carried on later at Mount Eden, but difficulties arose, and after six yeai's the sisters left Auckland, hoping to return. They arc now making a fresh start under happy auspices.

No Distinction o! Creed The new institution, named St. Vincent's Home, will receive foundling infants between the ages of one month and two years. It will be staffed by five sisters trained in the Wellington homo, which has a very fine record in rearing weakly babies by Plunket methods. The houso is being provided with all the equipment needed, including sun-rooms, and a special room for preparing the bSibies' food. The Rev. Mother Cecilia, head of the order, is visiting Auckland to supervise the arrangements. Like* all the activities of the sisters, their work in Auckland will be carried on without distinction of creed. It is a rule that no direct payment may be accepted for any services rendered. Tho Auckland homo will be entirely dependent upon voluntary contributions, in money or in kind. Tho sisters, of course, receive no payment for their work.

The opening of the new foundling home is a corollary to the establishment of the Mount St. Joseph rescue home at Waikowhai by the Order of the Good Shepherd in September, 1931. The Roman Catholic Church in Auckland has institutions for orphan and destitute boys and girls, unfortunate women and aged people of both- sexes, and the addition of an infants' home completes tho activity in these directions.