The Way We Were

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Publication date: 2024

ISBN: 78-1-907535-84-0

Category: Religion

Type: Paperback with flaps

Price: €25

The Sisters of St Louis were founded by Louis Bautain in the town of Juilly, near Paris, in 1842.

An Englishwoman, Genevieve Beale, brought the order to Monaghan in 1859, initially to run a reformatory.

The congregation expanded rapidly through the second half of the 19th century, especially in the northern half of Ireland, but not for more than fifty years would the Sisters of St Louis venture to England, a ‘foreign mission’ despite its geographical proximity.

The first foundation in England was in Redditch, Worcestershire, in 1912. There followed Great Yarmouth, Bury St Edmunds, Newmarket and Aylesbury, all devoted to providing much-needed Catholic education at primary and secondary level. A small number of sisters later worked in St Francis Home for Boys, Shefford, Bedfordshire.

After Vatican II and especially after the congregation adopted the preferential option for the poor in 1980, ministries diversified in focus and geographical location: to London, Shropshire, Liverpool, Nottingham and other towns and cities in the north of England, where sisters undertook social and community work, counselling of various kinds, interfaith work, catechetics and chaplaincy, to name just some of their many ministries. Primary schools bearing the St Louis name remain in Newmarket and Aylesbury.

An ageing membership and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic obliged the Sisters of St Louis to reconsider their future in England. The community eventually reached a decision that the small number of sisters remaining would transfer to the Irish region, a process that was completed in 2024.

The Way We Were, based both on archival research and personal testimony, celebrates the lives and work of the Sisters of St Louis in the more than a century since their first English foundation in Redditch.

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About the author

Jo O’Donoghue is a publisher and writer based in Dublin. She is also the author of New Horizons: The Sisters of St Louis in a Changing World (2012).