Glass panel by artist Petra Reece, depicting the arrival of the first FCJ Sisters at Sandridge, Victoria in 1882.
By Aileen Ryan FCJ
One hundred and forty years ago, following an arduous journey at sea, a group of young women set foot in the Australian colony of Victoria with a mission to educate children. So began the story of the Faithful Companions of Jesus in Australia.
On 1 June 2022 the Faithful Companions of Jesus (FCJ) marked 140 years since the arrival at Sandridge (Port Melbourne) of their first Sisters in Australia—12 women from England and Ireland, most of them in their twenties, under the leadership of Mother Mary John Daly.
They had left their home-shores some six weeks earlier and not all had enjoyed the journey!
This small band of young women had been missioned to Australia by the successor of their Foundress, Marie Madeleine d’Houet, at the invitation of Archbishop Goold and Fr Joseph Dalton SJ, the Jesuit Provincial. Their mission was to set up schools for the education of the many children in Richmond and, later, the surrounding areas.
Within 12 days of their arrival, on 12 June 1882, the Melbourne Catholic newspaper reported that the Sisters had opened their high school and free school.
Beginnings in France
In the 19th century numerous religious congregations were founded to meet the social needs of post-Revolution France. Marie Madeleine d’Houet, who did not set out with the intention of establishing a new congregation, saw the need to help young people of her day, particularly girls, to find their place in society. She responded by establishing schools, first in Amiens, then another in Châteauroux, for the children of the cotton pickers. From here, her work spread. She founded twelve convents in France, ten in England, three in Ireland, two in Switzerland and one in Italy. Some of these she closed, but it remained to her successor to send Sisters to the missions of Australia and Canada.
Early Challenges in Australia
First FCJ house at Richmond, Victoria.
In the colony of Victoria, Australia, religious education was undergoing difficulties. In 1872 the Secular Education Act withdrew state aid from church schools and provided education in government schools that would be ‘secular, compulsory and free’. All denominational schools were affected by this legislation, and most of the small Protestant schools closed. Many state schools were, of necessity, built in anticipation of the numbers that would come from the church schools.
There were two parish schools in Richmond at this time. One Sunday, after the last Mass at St Ignatius, the priest removed the Blessed Sacrament and transformed the church into a meeting room. About 2000 people were said to be present. The pastor outlined the situation, saying that on the Friday the government had served each of the teachers in St James’ schools (as the Richmond Catholic schools were called then) with notice that they should attend the new Brighton Street state school if they wished to obtain employment under the Department.[1] All the pupils were to report to the nearby state school, specially built to take them. The teachers relied on their salaries to support their families, and the state was offering more than they could expect from St James’.
When the time came, all the staff, except for Mrs Mooney, transferred. However, all of the pupils turned up for school on Monday morning as usual. To meet the teaching demand, Mrs Mooney was assisted in the classroom by a number of women who joined her, and the parish priest who took charge of the boys’ school, finding some young men to assist him.
Growth and Expansion
With the Catholic community under financial pressure, the bishops and priests remembered the nuns and brothers who had taught them as small boys in Ireland. Their requests for help resulted in the great missionary expansion that peaked in the 1880s, with daughter foundations from houses already in Australia as well as new congregations being established.
Fr Dalton SJ, Provincial of the Society of Jesus in Australia, wrote to Ireland requesting Christian Brothers and religious Sisters for the schools. The Christian Brothers arrived at the end of 1875. They opened a new school on 25 January 1876 which was blessed by Archbishop Goold the following week. There were already 200 boys enrolled.
The FCJ Sisters did not arrive until 1882, the same year that the Christian Brothers gave up the charge of the boys’ school in order to staff an orphanage in Geelong.
After the death of the Foundress, other FCJ houses were opened in Belgium, Scotland, Romania. Australia, Canada, America, Indonesia, Bolivia, Argentina, the Philippines and Myanmar.
Although some of these have been closed for pastoral reasons, the work of the FCJ Society continues to reach out to those in spiritual or material need.
[1] This story is told in G.J. O’Kelly SJ, Australia’s Catholic Church (Melbourne: Dove Communications, 1972).
This article was submitted by the Faithful Companions of Jesus.