MARY WARD JUBILEE YEAR

This year we celebrate 400 years of our founder Mary Ward's vision for girl child

                “A woman of Great Prudence and of extraordinary courage and powers of mind.

               A Holy and Great servant of God”.             ~Pope Urban VIII - 1637

Mother Mary Ward wanted to do something for her faith and emancipation of women from a very young age.

“Act not out of fear”, she said, “ but solely from love, because you are called by God to a vocation of love”.

Mary Ward, that incomparable woman, knew the path she had chosen for the greater glory of God were filled with trials and tribulations. However the combination of a tenacious spirit with the conviction that she was doing God’s work carried her through every persecution.

She believed that, “fervour is not placed in feelings but in a will to do well, which women may have as well as men. There is no such difference between men and women”. She knew that women in time to come may  do great things.

In 1921 ,the Archbishop of Westminster said, “It is a duty of gratitude to recall continually to the Catholics as well as the teaching orders of religious women throughout the world, that the existence of modern educational and charitable congregations such as we know them, was made possible by the supernatural foresight ,the heroic perseverance and the terrible disappointments and sufferings of Mary Ward.”

Mary Ward was buried in the small cemetery of the church of Osbaldwick near Heworth. The inscription on her tombstone read To love the poor,  persevere in the same, live, die and rise with them,  was all the aim of,  Mary Ward ,who having lived 60 years and 8 days died on the 30^th  of January 1645 and left us to live her vision.