T (07) 3394 9999 Absentee Line (07) 3394 9964 E email@loreto.qld.edu.au W www.loreto.qld.edu.au PO Box 1726 Coorparoo DC Qld 4151
Volume 9 - 24 March, 2015 Dear Parents & Students This year, in Loreto Schools across Australia not only are we celebrating the theme of ‘Verity” but we are also remembering with thanks the life of remarkable Mother Gonzaga Barry IBVM, the founder of Loreto Schools in Australia, as 2015 is the 100th anniversary of her death. I take this opportunity to share with you this extract taken from the Loreto Australia website www.loreto.org.au
“Mary Barry (1834-1915) was educated at Loreto Gorey and Rathfarnham, Ireland. In 1875, at the request of the Bishop of Ballarat, she led the first group of Loreto Sisters to Australia. “Leave after you something on which others may build.” Mary Gonzaga Barry
(24/7/1834 – 4/03/1915) Mary Barry was born into a large, well-to-do family in Wexford. As a child she witnessed some of the horror of the Great Famine of the 1840s and never forgot it. She was educated at Loreto Gorey and Rathfarnham, joining the Institute herself at the age of 19, and taking the name of the young Jesuit saint, Aloysius Gonzaga. She held various leadership positions over the next twenty years and in 1875, at the invitation of the Bishop of Ballarat, led the first group of Loreto Sisters to the Australian colonies. Gonzaga was small, plump, profoundly deaf and increasingly dependent on the use of an ear trumpet and yet during her 40 years in the colonies she became one of the most significant figures in Australian Catholic education, particularly for women. Ireland was in her soul and yet she identified with her adopted country. A woman of extraordinary energy and faith, she embraced educational initiatives from kindergarten to tertiary level and founded teacher training colleges in Ballarat and Melbourne. In the last 20 years of her life she took a leading role among Mary Ward women worldwide in the cause of union. Gonzaga died at Mary’s Mount, Ballarat, on 4th March 1915 and is buried there in the small garden cemetery. Gonzaga Barry urged pupils of Loreto schools to “leave after you something on which others may build.” She lived these words herself. In her 40 years in the Australian colonies she founded ten girls’ boarding schools, ten day schools, six primary schools, three kindergartens and two teacher training colleges as well as taking over the running of at least eight parish schools.
Justice
Freedom
VERITY
Sincerity
Felicity