Text of Presentation
Thank you all for joining us this evening, as we celebrate 175 years of the presence of the Religious of the Assumption in England – it is a great joy to us that so many of our friends are with us this evening, and we know that many more will share our joy through the video that is being made. We begin with Sr Francesca speaking about the origins of the Assumption – as you see, she is suitably dressed for the occasion!
Our foundress St. Marie Eugenie was born in France in 1817 to a wealthy but irreligious family, so she did not receive an overtly religious education. However, as a teenager, when she was trying to work out how to live her life, she had a strong ‘conversion’ experience while listening to a Lenten sermon and understood that she needed/wanted to give her life to God, but didn’t know how.
One year later she met Fr Combalot, a priest and preacher who wanted to found a female religious congregation for the education of women.
This mission resonated with Marie Eugenie – as she was aware that women’s education was very poor in her society and was convinced that an education enlightened by the values of the Gospel could be the foundation to create a more just society and bring about God’s Kingdom.
Marie Eugénie accepted to be part of the project, and with a small group of young women formed the first community, becoming the foundress of the Religious of the Assumption. She was canonised in 2007.
A few years later, a friend of hers, Fr D’Alzon, founded a male congregation dedicated to the Assumption: The Augustinians of the Assumption, known as the Assumptionists. And fathers from this congregations later founded three more female congregations: the Little Sisters of the Assumption, the Oblates of the Assumption, and the Orantes of the Assumption. We form together the Assumption family
At the beatification of St Marie Eugenie Pope Paul VI highlighted the two essential features of the charism of the Religious of the Assumption: education and adoration. He quoted Marie Eugenie’s saying that “Religious vowed by vocation to education have more need than others to be emersed in prayer”.
The spirituality of the Religious of the Assumption is one that is purposefully “rich in the spirituality of the Church”, taking the best of different spiritualities and making them our own. We have always tried to balance being both apostolic and contemplative.
From the beginning, Marie Eugenie and the first sisters held to praying the whole of the Divine Office of the Church, despite resistance from church authorities. However, the sisters held fast to their ideal, with Marie Eugenie declaring that she and the sisters “would prefer to go to heaven sooner” than to give up praying the full Divine Office.
Like all members of the Assumption family, a motto very dear to us is “Thy Kingdom Come” and our ultimate aim is to advance the coming of God’s kingdom by making Jesus Christ and his Church known and loved, and sharing the values of the Gospel so that the Kingdom of God may become more visible on earth.
We are in 1850, the year of the restoration of the English Catholic hierarchy, the foundation of St. Mary’s College and the arrival of the Assumption Sisters in Richmond, - not upon Thames - but on Swale, the gateway to the North Yorkshire Dales. It was the mid-Victorian industrial era, a time of technical advancement and social progress. One hundred and thirty years later a pupil in the school would write: “In the beginning, our parish priests were Jesuits. Now they are Roman Catholics”. At one time a member of that Jesuit community was the modernist George Tyrell.
Skipping over facts of how we got to Richmond, one colourful character must be mentioned, Louisa Catherine Duchess of Leeds. She was an American heiress who, on marrying the Duke saved his estate from bankruptcy, just like in Downton Abbey. On converting to Catholicism, she set about doing good works. Under her dominance the first project in Richmond was to run an orphanage, and although it helped establish the sisters in Richmond it was not a success. There were often clashes of ideas, like when the sisters thought it unnecessary for the orphans to have to learn French.
The mission took off when the boarding school was built. The aim was to offer a broad curriculum and form strong characters who would contribute to society. “Direct their flight but don’t clip their wings” was the advice. This became the model of the other schools that followed, in Kensington, Ramsgate, Sidmouth and Hengrave. Ramsgate was designed by Pugin with a spectacular gateway – but he forgot to put in a main staircase!
The Richmond school flourished for many decades until it closed in 1994.
The sisters also had charge of what was called the ‘elementary school’ for the local children, until the time came to hand over to lay management, having for its first head an alumnus of St. Mary’s College Strawberry Hill. It still thrives as St. Mary’s Catholic Primary School.
A lesser, but enduring legacy, is a confection called Assumption tart. It dates back to the arrival of the first sisters whose culinary skills were minimal. They assuaged their hunger with pieces of short crust pastry topped with jam. It looks like this.
The Religious of the Assumption came to Earls Court in London in 1857, and by 1860 they were established in Kensington Square. For many years Cardinal Wiseman had insisted that he wanted the Assumption sisters in London but would never specify exactly what he wanted them to do there. Eventually Marie Eugenie persuaded him that their focus would be Adoration, retreats for women, and preparation for First Communion of young women converts.
In 1867 we provided a home for the parish poor school and then opened a boarding school. This slide shows a group of pupils in 1875. At this time the extensive grounds housed a farmyard and sisters even engaged in haymaking!
During the first world war, although the convent was full of refugees, and the lawns where the children played were turned into vegetable gardens, teaching continued. Following the war a very successful Montessori school was set up, where teachers were trained in this method. The schools remained at Kensington until the evacuations of the second world war, when ARP—Air Raid Precautions—made it their base.
After the second world war, with the loss of so much life, teachers, particularly Catholic teachers, were in short supply. In 1946 Maria Assumpta Teacher Training College was born, and a large hostel was built. The all-female students came to dances here at St Mary’s, perhaps even in this very room….
Sisters also became involved in different forms of pastoral work, including with the Vietnamese Refugee Centre which was opened in Kensington in response to the needs of the thousands of Vietnamese boat people who arrived following the collapse of the South Vietnamese government in 1975. Providentially, Sr Emmanuel was already in London and was able to provide a much-needed welcome and practical support for many of them.
Due to changing government regulations, the college closed in 1978, and the Maria Assumpta Educational and Pastoral Centre opened. Various organisations rented premises, including Westminster Pastoral Foundation, Westminster Inter-faith and the National Society for Religious Education. A great success story was the work of Sr Mary John, a retired teacher who, with seemingly limitless passion and energy founded the Dyslexia centre. She is pictured here, with Princess Diana visiting the centre.
Probably the most well-known resident of Maria Assumpta Centre was Heythrop College, the specialist theology and philosophy university college run by the Jesuits. Later, in 2009 they would buy the property, before sadly closing in 2018, having announced in 2013 that they would stop recruiting undergraduates.
Today the sisters remain in Kensington, with daily office and adoration in the beautiful Maria Assumpta Chapel and with a thriving young adult ministry, offering retreat, pilgrimage, social and cultural experiences, as well as our Assumption Volunteer programme led by two of our wonderful lay co-workers, Anne Marie and Rebecca, whose stall you can visit today.
In 1957 a small group of sisters were missioned for a new adventure – to found the Religious of the Assumption in East Africa. The sisters arrived in Mandaka, Tanzania, and soon opened a middle school and a teacher training college. (Sr Kate was both a student at this school and a student at the teacher training college.) Further communities and schools were opened in Tanzania, and in 1971 our first community began in Kenya, opening a secondary school. Here is a photo of many of the sisters in our East African province today; we are 78 sisters, 3 novices and 2 postulants, in fourteen communities in five dioceses in Tanzania and Kenya. We are happy to now be supporting our sisters in England, especially through Sr Kate’s presence here and the arrival of two young sisters who will join the Twickenham community and study at St Mary’s from September.
The Second Vatican Council ended in 1965. By 1970 we were reviewing our mission in the light of our resources, the challenges of the Vatican Council, and of society.
We chose to respond to the Council’s Decree on Ecumenism, which called for Christians to renew their way of living and serving as well as to work “to overcome their differences so as again to be ‘one’, as the Lord Jesus asked his Father for them.” Sr. Elizabeth Dove was both visionary and leader in shaping this response. An American Friar of the Atonement, Fr. Emmanuel Sullivant told her that to work seriously for ecumenism was to live it, doing what we could together while being faithful to our own traditions and respecting those of others.
The closure of a boarding school made a property available, one of outstanding beauty; a 16th century manor with a history of Catholic recusancy, in 46 acres of ground and a church recorded in the in the Doomsday book.
The first community numbered 24 including children; Roman Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Lutheran and Greek Orthodox. Numbers would fluctuate but retain the mix of traditions. The community always enjoyed the active support of the local dioceses and church leaders.
The book “Hengrave Remembered” explains the process of forging and sustaining a community who were, at the same time, running a conference centre. A Quaker member once remarked “It’s so mad that it can only be the work of the Holy Spirit!”
Central to the community’s life was its twice daily prayer. We attended both Roman Catholic and Anglican eucharists. Not being able to practise eucharistic hospitality caused pain and sometimes tension, but this made us aware that the sign of reconciliation is the cross and that we were pioneers on the way,
Central to the work was the hospitality that witnessed to all aspects of healing and reconciliation for our guests, who came singly, in groups and from everywhere. The beauty of the place facilitated many expressions and programmes of art, music, poetry, renewal of creation, desires for peace. People came to recuperate and pray, to discern a path, to write a book, and very often they came back again.
When, in 2005 Hengrave had to yield to the forces that made it close, the dominant mood was of thanksgiving for thirty glorious years, as we prayed:
“Lord God, you alone remain eternal, changeless yet ever creative. We commend all that has been here at Hengrave to the guiding hand of your providence and the gentleness of your mercy.”
From the 1950’s onwards the influence of liberation theology from Latin America, with its drum beat ‘option for the poor’ was increasing its impact. Among ourselves there had been stirrings since the 1970’s, which eventually led to action. We didn’t need to go to Latin America, but in1993 three sisters went to an area high on the Index of Multiple Deprivation, in Newcastle. The only item on the agenda was to go… and take it from there.
Before we even had time to unpack, curiosity drove children constantly to bang on our door with a “can I come in?” and when they had left we would witness from our window their destructive and harassing play. We thought that creative activities might replace this destructiveness, which was largely due to boredom. We hired an empty shop and, helped by university students and minimal resources, offered after school creative activities. We had a slogan “Let’s Make not Break”, to which got added “Let’s Give not Take”. It was gratifying to overhear a child say “Me, I’d never nick from the nuns”.
That, in a nutshell, is the genesis of Kids Kabin, a well-established creative arts centre for young people in Newcastle and Middlesbrough. You can look up its website and/or read the story in the book “Let’s make not break: The story of Kids Kabin”.
Other opportunities have been in projects for asylum seekers, offering language lessons, advocacy, friendship and support; school chaplaincy, and some parish involvement.
Above all we discovered that our principal mission was among our neighbours, whose parents and grandparents had been ship-builders, miners, steel workers in now obsolete, and unreplaced trades. We saw close up the degrading effects of unemployment and admired their endurance. We are grateful for having been ‘let in alongside’ as it were, able to be part of their laughter and tears, and there was plenty of both, and we received as much as we were able to give. It was sad when we had to leave last year, but happily our volunteers trained and supported by Anne Marie and Rebecca stay on to give their invaluable contribution to Kids Kabin.
It is said that in 1850 Marie Eugenie would have preferred us to go to Newcastle rather than to Richmond. In the event we managed both.
We spoke earlier of the closure of Heythrop College. One of the possibilities was that Heythrop would merge with or come to St Mary’s. The discussions about this advanced quite far, far enough anyway, for the then provincial of the Jesuits to suggest to the then vice-chancellor, Francis Campbell, that the Assumption sisters would also be invited to have a presence at St Mary’s. The Jesuits had appreciated our presence and our prayer in the Kensington chapel and thought this would be an asset to St Mary’s. Well, Heythrop and the Jesuits never came, but we did! As many of you will know, Francis Campbell was passionate about increasing the presence of Catholics in university life. In June 2016, 4 sisters arrived, with the mission to be a ‘praying presence’ at St Mary’s and to support the Catholic ethos of the university, particularly the work of the chaplaincy. We have always been very warmly welcomed here, and have been involved in various ways, and very much feel that we have made a home here. We are particularly delighted that 10th March, the Feast of St Marie Eugenie has been adopted as a university celebration.
We were fortunate to find a house for sale just opposite the white gates of St Mary’s, and even more fortunate when the house next door came up for sale, enabling us to house more sisters and provide accommodation for women students.
So, 175 years after the first sisters came to Richmond, Yorkshire, we are 27 sisters in 4 communities in Kensington, Notting Hill Gate, Wanstead and Twickenham.
In 2018 we united with our sisters in Belgium, Italy and Lithuania, to become a Province of Europe, a new organisational structure which enables us to provide support to one another, which is particularly important for the younger sisters.
There are currently 3 European novices in Paris – including Sarah who was in community with us in Twickenham last year. We give thanks that God is continuing to call women to this way of live, and while we have no idea what the coming 175 years will bring, it is a future full of hope!