Our Story
History
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Brescia to France
The Ursulines, originally called “The Company of St Ursula”, were founded in 1535 by Angela Merici in the town of Brescia, northern Italy. Members of the Company of St Ursula did not take vows, but simply promised “virginity”, and lived in their own family homes, engaging in whatever work they needed to earn a living. Their chief reason for being members of the Company was to be consecrated to God.
Having spread from Brescia to Milan and other Italian towns, about 1590 the Company reached France where Priests and Bishops wanted to set up groups to help in their apostolic work of catechetics. Well known wealthy Parisian noblewomen, anxious to help implement the reforms of the Council of Trent in the church and to care for the education of girls, undertook to establish religious houses of women in Paris and elsewhere. Each monastery to be established became autonomous.
By 1612, with the papal approval of the Congregation of Paris, the original idea of Angela’s company gave way to that of a monastic order in which the members were called “Ursulines”. This change had ramifications for the Ursulines in Australia more than 300 years later. Although monastic life meant strict enclosure, the nuns managed to retain their apostolate of teaching by taking a fourth vow of “education of girls” as well as the three traditional ones of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience.
France to Germany to England
In 1660, just 125 years after the formation of the Company, Ursulines went from Paris to open a school in Erfurt in Saxony. From there a foundation was made in 1700 in Duderstadt, an ancient Hanoverian town.
During the Napoleonic wars the nuns were expelled from their monastery. Later they returned to a building almost in ruins, but they restored their home and reopened the school which was to flourish. Difficulties beset them again in 1871 when Prussia was victorious in war against France and Prince Otto von Bismarck became Chancellor. Bismarck attacked the church, enacting anti-clerical legislation. The May laws of 1873 dictated that all teaching religious orders were to be dissolved or expelled from the territories of the new German empire and their property confiscated, with education passing under the control of the state. The Ursulines were able to avoid the impact of these laws until 1877 when they finally had to leave Germany to find a home elsewhere.
They managed to establish themselves in Greenwich, London and immediately set up a school. While there they met a young Capuchin priest Fr Elzear Torreggiani who promised to help them if ever he had the opportunity. He was made bishop of Armidale New South Wales in 1879 and promptly invited the Ursulines to his diocese. Around this time many religious congregations came to Australia at the invitation of bishops, precisely to carry out the work of Catholic Education and especially since by 1882 the government had withdrawn financial aid from independent schools.
Australia
Armidale
Ursuline Convent Armidale Welcoming Lady Stonehaven , wife of the Governor-General, 1929
When they were expelled from Germany by the laws of the Kulterhampf in 1877, members of the Ursuline Community of Duderstadt fled to Greenwich in England. Five years later ten of them took the long voyage to Australia.
After a few days in Sydney, including attendance at the opening of St Mary’s Cathedral on 8th September, they travelled by boat, train and coach to Armidale. There they were welcomed to their new home late in the evening of 12th September, 1882. One week later they had begun their new school. They also taught in St Mary’s Parish School, among the students being boys up to the age of fifteen – quite a new experience for the sisters.
After almost one hundred years of educating girls and providing boarding school facilities for them, in 1976 St Ursula's College amalgamated with De La Salle College becoming what is now O’Connor Catholic High. St Mary’s is still a flourishing primary school, now under the care of a lay principal. Ursulines continued to teach in O’Connor until 1998 and in St Mary’s until 2000.
Until 2008 there has been a small Ursuline community living in the original building provided by Bishop Torreggiani and sharing the faith and life of the people of Armidale for over 125 years. The future holds significant change for the Ursulines of Autralia, after a recent discernment that it was time to move from this place where the founding mothers had settled.
Tweed Heads
St Angela's Convent - Tweed Heads
A high school was opened, the first students sitting for the Intermediate Certificate in 1929. The Ursulines closed St Angela’s Convent in 1951, and the Lismore Presentation sisters took over the running of St Joseph’s school.
Guyra
In 1919, the sisters accepted the invitation from Bishop O’Connor, of Armidale, to go to the small town of Guyra. The sisters named their convent St Augustine’s and the primary school St Mary of the Angels.
In 1921 a small secondary school was begun. It closed in 1958. The Ursulines left Guyra in 1969, with the Sisters of Mercy from Monte St Angelo, North Sydney, continuing the work commenced by the Ursulines in Guyra.
Dutton Park
The Ursulines first came to Dutton Park on 3rd January, 1919. They set up house in “Wahcumba”, renamed “Rosary Hill”. This was situated some distance from St Ita’s Chapel across Gladstone Road at “Borva” which served as Chapel, Presbytery and classroom.
School opened on 27th January and the following April the foundation stone for a new school was laid. In January 1924 the Nuns moved to Ingelnuck, adjacent to the Church and School. Following the Government’s approval of St Ita’s as a Secondary School in 1932, a new school building was commenced which was to accommodate both levels of education until a new Secondary School, to be known as St Ursula’s College, was built in 1956, to be extended in 1964. Developments in education in the 1970s required careful discernment about whether further building should occur or a decision made re the viability of the College.
Ultimately a decision was taken to close the College in 1974. In exchange for the College building the Archdioesan authorities provided a new convent to accommodate seven sisters. Two units for aged sisters were built with funding from the Commonwealth Government and Ursulines continued to enjoy these facilities until the final move from Dutton Park in 2005.
“Duporth”, Oxley
Archbishop Duhig blessed and formally opened “Duporth” on 7 December 1924. By 1938 there were 35 students coming from distant parts of Queensland, as far away as Hungerford and Normanton on the Gulf of Carpentaria. “Duporth” never became a big school but was always much loved by its pupils for its very homeliness and the individual care which this allowed.
Under pressure to provide education to larger numbers, the Ursuline province leadership closed the school at the end of 1957.
Ashbury (Sydney)
Former Ursuline Convent, Ashbury
On 31st January, 1939 the new building of St Ursula’s College was opened on land beside the convent. When the College was closed in 1965, many of the students continued their education at St Ursula’s College, Kingsgrove, but Ursulines continue to live in Ashbury, engaged in educational and pastoral ministries.
Toowoomba
At the end of 1930 “Kerrielaw” became the residence for five Ursulines and the nucleus for a boarding and day school, officially opened and blessed in February, 1931. Four sisters were added to the community in February 1940 to staff the newly established parish primary school of Our Lady of Lourdes in Newtown.
A new venture of co-education began in 1971 with about 80 senior girls from St Ursula’s joining the senior boys of Downlands College. This arrangement lasted until 1993 when the Senior classes were resumed at St Ursula’s.
Now St Ursula’s College Toowoomba is thriving as a boarding and day school for girls, still owned by the Ursulines but, since 2005, with a completely lay staff and a Board of Directors with Ursuline representation.
Ursulines are today engaged in Diocesan and Parish ministry in Toowoomba and in Mitchell, within the Toowoomba diocese.
Kingsgrove (Sydney)
Former Ursuline Convent, Kingsgrove, now part of St Ursula's College
The Ursulines took up residence in Kingsgrove in 1954 and continued their administration of St Ursula’s College until 2007. They are still involved in different ways in both St Ursula’s and Our Lady of Fatima Primary School.
Macedon
The span of Ursuline life in Macedon, Victoria, was just 5 years (1950-1955). It began with the foundation of a boarding school in what was previously the Golf House, Mount Macedon. However, demands for sisters to staff schools and to become fully trained professionally led to its closure in favour of places with a “higher population density”.
Canberra
The first Ursuline community in Canberra opened in 1958 as a “House of Studies”. “Ursula College” followed in 1968 as a residence for 200 female students within the ANU (Australian National University). Sisters studied at the University and Signadou Teachers College and over the years taught at St Michael’s School, (Lyneham, and later Kaleen), Charnwood, Catholic Girls High School (later Merici College). They also engaged in pastoral work in the parishes of Aranda and Kaleen.
Currently Ursulines still live in Canberra sharing the lives of the people in Araluen Retirement Village, until recently in Holy Spirit Parish, Gungahlin, and co-ordinating the Young Christian Women’s Interfaith Fellowship program.
Other Places
In more recent years Sisters have moved into smaller communities allowing involvement in diverse ministries in Queensland, New South Wales and A.C.T.