WelCom October 2024

Anne Phibbs csb

Sr Helena Fouhy csb was first professed as a Brigidine Sister on 8 September 1944 in the Randwick Novitiate, Sydney. So on 8 September 2024, the 80th anniversary of her profession, she was offered congratulations on her historic day.

It was a momentous occasion for Sr Helena as the first New Zealand Brigidine to reach 100 years of age and the first to celebrate 80 years of profession as a Brigidine.

Mons Brian Walsh assisted by Bishop Owen Dolan – who have both been good friends to Sr Helena over many years – celebrated a Jubilee Mass for her.

During the homily Sr Helena told of the dangerous crossing of the Tasman Sea in 1942 when submarines had been sighted, and the eventual docking of their ship in Melbourne instead of Sydney. It was a long way from Marima, Pahiatua, where she was brought up.

Among the many assembled to honour Sr Helena were 40 or more of her nieces and nephews, residents of Palmerston North Metlifecare Retirement Village where Sr Helena now lives, and Brigidine Sisters including Sr Maree Marsh who had flown in to Palmerston North from Sydney for the occasion. Sr Maree represented the leadership team of the Southern Cross Community – an amalgamation of the previous Provinces of Victoria and NSW and the Region of New Zealand.

Among the accolades, Sr Helena was thanked for her many years of teaching, including classroom teaching, music and principalship. Her first posting in 1944 was to Johnsonville. She also taught at St Patrick’s, Masterton, St Pius X, Titahi Bay, as well secondary teaching at Viard College in Porirua and St Raphael’s in Cowra, NSW. Much of it was pioneer work but Titahi Bay provided the greatest experience of pioneering with eight Brigidines somehow fitting into a two-bedroomed beach house.

Sr Helena was also thanked for her thorough research and writing of the history of the Brigidines in New Zealand: One Love, Many Faces.

It’s appropriate the 80th Jubilee is known as the Oak Jubilee because the oak is significant to Brigidines. Their patroness is St Brigid of Kildare in Ireland and Kildare means ‘the church of the oak’. In the early nineteenth century when Bishop Daniel Delany wanted to re-establish the Sisters of St Brigid, he took an oak sapling from Kildare to Tullow where he founded the Brigidines.

This now magnificent tree is nearly 220 years old. A candleholder made from prunings from that oak tree was given to Sr Helena to be passed on to the next Brigidine Oak Jubilarian.

The post ‘Oak Jubilee’ for centenarian sister first appeared on Archdiocese of Wellington.