Known all over Perth and Kalgoorlie, a beloved congregation of women finally get to see their foundress canonised.
By Anthony Barich
Newly canonised St Jeanne Jugan provides a powerful message to politicians responsible for legislation regarding the value of vulnerable elderly people, the local Mother Superior of the Little Sisters of the Poor said at the Order’s foundress’ canonisation Mass.
“Newly canonised saints always have a message for present day society and St Jeanne’s message is certainly about the dignity of human life, especially that final stage of the journey towards eternity,” said Mother Elizabeth Anne Lee LSP, Superior of the Perth congregation of the Order whose special charism it is to give palliative care, compassion and comfort to the elderly and infirm.
“May she be a light and comfort to the elderly, to those who care for them and to those responsible for legislation regarding the value of their lives.”
The Order was introduced to Australia by Archbishop James Goold OSA in 1884 and the first WA community was established at Adelaide Terrace, Perth from Sydney in 1920.
The liturgy, celebrated by Archbishop Barry Hickey and 26 priests and Religious at Infant Jesus Church, Morley on October 31, was prepared by the Little Sisters and had a special focus on the dignity of the human person at all stages of life.
The theme was reflected in the readings, the Gospel of the Beatitudes read by the Little Sisters’ Glendalough chaplain Fr Eugene McGrath, and the Prayers of Intercession, which said: “For the elderly of the whole world, that through the intercession of St Jeanne Jugan they may have their rights respected, their dignity upheld and receive the love and care that they deserve.”
Another Intercession prayed: “For our politicians, that they may be convinced of the innate dignity of every human person and protect the lives of the vulnerable.”
The Mass, celebrated in a packed church, included Dominicans, Benedictine monks from New Norcia, Carmelites, Redemptorists, Oblates of Mary Immaculate, the Redemptoris Mater Rector and seminarians of the Neocatechumenal Way. Religious Sisters at the Mass included Josephites, Presentation Sisters, Missionaries of Charity, Holy Family of Nazareth, Servites and Ursulines. Newer Associations including Missionaries of the Gospel and the New Apostolate Consecrated in the Heart of the Holy Family were also present, as well as the Ukrainian Catholic Religious Order, the Sister Servants of Mary Immaculate.
Archbishop Hickey said that while the circumstances of society have changed since St Jugan’s time, the poor are still with us, and the challenge to shelter the homeless poor and share bread with the hungry remains as relevant as ever.
He said that 18th Century Europe was beset by hostility in St Jeanne Jugan’s time, yet many saints were produced in this period. Even now, he said, when the dignity of life is threatened, the Holy Spirit is awakening people again even in European countries that appear to be “completely paganised”.
He said that the October 31 Mass was thanksgiving to God for one of the earliest Religious Congregations to arrive in the Swan River Colony, before Perth was called an ‘Archdiocese’.
Little Sisters and Association of Jeanne Jugan members stood and declared their Renewal of Commitment, which included their desire to offer to the elderly in their care a safe environment where they are respected and loved.
“We desire to show to all with whom we come in contact, the primacy of eternal values and the boundless love of God,” they said, before Certificates of Appreciation were presented to 16 staff and supporters who had given between 10 and 37 years of service to the Little Sisters.
There are 12 Little Sisters in Perth and 80 in the Province which covers Australia, New Zealand, Western Samoa, Noumea and New Caledonia.
Meet the woman who Charles Dickens praised, who sacrificed self
By George Weigel
Denver Catholic Register
During the brutally hot summer of 2003, thousands of French vacationers remained on holiday rather than returning home to bury their recently deceased parents who had died from the extraordinary heat and were being stashed in airconditioned storage lockers. Those acts of filial impiety cast into sharp relief the October canonisation of Jeanne Jugan, foundress of the Little Sisters of the Poor.
Born during the virulently anti-Catholic French Revolution, Jeanne Jugan learned early in her life that fidelity to Christ and His Church could be costly. A history of the period of her childhood sums things up neatly: “In spite of the persecution, the people of Cancale kept the Faith. During dark nights, in an attic or a barn, or even in the middle of the countryside, the faithful gathered together, and there in the silence of the night, the priest would offer the Eucharist and baptise the children. “But this happiness was rare. There were so many dangers.”
Jeanne Jugan knew poverty as well as persecution, and developed a marked sensitivity to the humiliation that those who have fallen through the cracks of society’s net of solidarity can feel. She declined an offer of marriage because, as she put it, “God … is keeping me for a work which is not yet known, for a work which is not yet founded.” That work came into clear focus when, at age 47, she met an elderly, blind and sick woman whom she took into her care; from that seemingly random encounter was born a tremendous work of charity. The congregation of women Religious she founded dedicated itself to the care of the poor and elderly – and supported itself by begging, with the foundress, Jeanne Jugan, as chief beggar. The Little Sisters of the Poor spread rapidly throughout Europe, America and Africa, but the going was never easy for Jeanne Jugan.
In 1843, Jeanne Jugan’s re-election as superior was quashed by the community’s priest-advisor, Fr Augustin Marie Le Pailleur.
Refusing to contest what others would have deemed an injustice (but which she thought to be the will of God), Jeanne Jugan accepted this curious decision and went on the road, supporting her sisters by begging. For the last 27 years of her life, she lived at the Order’s motherhouse in retirement, again according to the orders of Fr Le Pailleur; her role as foundress was never acknowledged during her lifetime. Yet the novelist Charles Dickens could write, after meeting Jeanne Jugan, that “there is in this woman something so calm, and so holy, that in seeing her I know myself to be in the presence of a superior being. Her words went straight to my heart, so that my eyes, I know not how, filled with tears”.
To enter a house of the Little Sisters of the Poor today is to recapture what Dickens experienced. Elderly men and women with no-one else to care for them are given exquisite attention; the dignity of every patient is honoured, no matter how difficult that dignity may be to discern amidst the trials of senility and disease. The Little Sisters of the Poor and their patients are living reminders that there are no disposable human beings; that everyone is a someone for whom the Son of God entered the world, suffered and died; and that we read others out of the human family at our moral and political peril.
Yet that is the temptation facing the United States, and every other affluent society confronting a graying population, longer life expectancies, and spiralling medical costs. Where this temptation can lead is brutally displayed in the Netherlands, where euthanasia has been legal for years; and, as the late Father Richard John Neuhaus said of such travesties as the Dutch “death with dignity” laws, what is permitted will soon become mandatory. That is precisely what has happened in Holland and indeed wherever euthanasia is legally permitted.
St Jeanne Jugan, Sister Marie of the Cross in her religious life, is thus a powerful – and badly needed – intercessor for all who would defend the gift of life from conception until natural death.
George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Centre in Washington,
D C Weigel’s column is distributed by the
Denver Catholic Register, the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Denver.
Forty years of Goldfields hard yakka winds up
The ripping yarn of the Little Sisters of the Poor, who have now departed the Eastern Goldfields after 40 years of loving service to the frail and aged.
By Harry Argus
When one era begins, another often passes away.
Such was the case on October 25, when over 400 past and present parishioners gathered with Little Sisters of the Poor for a special Mass for four reasons:
To celebrate the canonisation of St Jeanne Jugan, foundress of the Little Sisters of the Poor; to thank the same Order of Sisters for 40 years of dedicated, loving service for the elderly and frail; to say goodbye to the Sisters as they would depart their Nursing Home in Kalgoorlie on November 2 due to the lack of vocations; and to introduce and thank the Catholic Southern Cross Care for taking over the running of the Sisters of the Poor Nursing Home in Kalgoorlie.
With Pope Benedict XVI’s October 11 canonisation of Jeanne Jugan in Rome, a new era of appreciation has begun for the woman some have called the Mother Teresa of her generation, overcoming extraordinary odds to bring about God’s kingdom among the most vulnerable.
While the Order still has 2,710 Sisters and 60 novices working in 202 homes welcoming over 13,000 elderly residents on five continents, the WA congregation is shrinking, after Sisters from Sydney established the first WA community at Adelaide Terrace, Perth in 1920.
With a deserved sense of reverence, then, a moving Mass was concelebrated by Frs Joseph Rathnaraj, Andrew Albis, Chris Alambe, main celebrant Brian McKenna and Maurice Toop.
In his homily, Fr Toop painted a picture in words of the Sisters’ life and work on the Goldfields. It is a story of remarkable sacrifice and service, not just for the elderly but for the local indigenous on the fringes of society – in the true spirit of their foundress.
Twelve Little Sisters of the Poor attended the Mass, eight of whom were former staff members in Kalgoorlie. They had come from all parts of Australia for the occasion, including Sr Mary Anne from Sydney, the Mother Provincial of the Order in Australia. The Little Sisters of the Poor had prepared a special liturgy and hymns for the Mass.
After Mass, the Little Sisters invited all for a barbeque lunch on the lawns of their Nursing Home, where many speeches of thanks and gifts were presented to the Sisters from the likes of the Parish Priest, Fr Rathnaraj, the Mayor of Kalgoorlie, Ron Yuryevich, Parish Council Chairman Robert Hicks and Kevin Bartle representing his wife and patients of the Home.
The Little Sisters were told of the great work that they had done over the years and that they would be sadly missed in the future.
Mother Mary Geraldine said in reply that even though they were very sad at going, they knew they were leaving the Nursing Home in good hands with their dedicated lay staff who were staying behind; and knew that the Home would be administrated by a well-known Catholic organisation, Southern Cross Care.
The Little Sisters arrived in the Goldfields just over 40 years ago hoping fully in God’s providence, and in doing so had made great changes in the town and brought much happiness to the lives of many elderly people through the years.
In 1966, there were many public discussions about the welfare of the old people in the town of Kalgoorlie and Boulder.
Many elderly people living in the town who could not look after themselves were accommodated in the Kalgoorlie Regional and St John of God’s Hospital and Coolgardie Hospital. There were also many elderly frail prospectors living in camps on their mining leases around the Goldfields who lived alone.
In a survey carried out that year, Dr Lefroy of the Public Health Department and then-Kalgoorlie Mayor Bert Hammond found there was a need for a home for the frail to be established in the town.
In November 1966, Fr Maurice Toop, the Parish Priest of Kalgoorlie, approached Bishop Myles McKeon, the Auxiliary Bishop of Perth, about the possibility of inviting a religious congregation to set up a home for the aged in Kalgoorlie. The Bishop then spoke of the matter to the Provincial, Mother Marie de la Passion of the Little Sisters of the Poor. She was very interested, especially when she was told that the Goldfields was the home of many Aborigines who needed much help.
Bishop McKeon accompanied Mother de la Passion and her assistant to Kalgoorlie in April to find a suitable site for a home for the aged.
Various sites were suggested by the Kalgoorlie Town Council, but the two Sisters and Dr Lafroy insisted that the home should be within walking distance of the town’s main centre. Town Clerk Douglas Morrison was extremely helpful, and with his help an application was made to the Council for a portion of Victoria Park in Croesus Street to be made available. The Council then supported the idea and released two acres of the park for a home.
Still, the area was found to be insufficient and by June of that same year, Bishop McKeon and the Sisters returned to Kalgoorlie where Mother Marie de la Passion addressed a meeting of the Council, asking for the whole area of Victoria Park. Strongly supported by Councillors Hartrey, Grace Pilkington, Ivanac and others, the motion was unanimously passed to make the whole of the park available for a home.
The Councillors’ decision fired up fierce controversy amongst the town’s population, and by the end of November 1967, the park was vested to the Little Sisters of the Poor to build a home for the frail, with the exception of a strip of land taking in a rotunda building on the south-east side of the park.
Meanwhile, the Little Sisters of the Poor had purchased a house at 12 Croesus Street where the first community lived.
Mother Marie Consolata and Sr Bernadette quickly established a Day Care Centre in their residence, and began systematic visitations to many old people’s homes around the town and carried out meal services to them, with the help of women from the Magellan Club of Kalgoorlie.
Their visits also included checking on many prospectors and Aborigines living in shelters on their gold leases and reserves in the bush around Kalgoorlie.
Often they would bring in old people to their convent for a bath, change of clothes and a meal. The sisters were also given help and advice from George Budge and Morris Brownly of the Native Welfare Department, who were also deeply concerned for the welfare of the elderly Aborigines around the town.
In time, and through Government and private donations, work building the Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged started in 1968, and, true to the style of Jeanne Jugan, for many years the Sisters doorknocked through the Goldfields and into the wheatbelt for funds to finance their building, which also included attending at the doors and gates of crowd-gathering functions, such as horse race meetings in Kalgoorlie with a donation box.
The Sisters in Kalgoorlie would each year travel as far as the wheat growing areas around New Norcia to ask farmers for donations, which may have also helped finance their Home for the Aged at Glendalough in Perth.
During 1969 the partly completed Home for the Aged in Kalgoorlie began to take in its first elderly patients but it was not until April 5, 1970 that the building was officially blessed and opened by Archbishop Launcelot Goody and H A Hammond, the Mayor of Kalgoorlie.
The building was dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and provided a great need for the aged and frail people of all religious faiths in the Goldfields. The second floor of the building became the convent for the Sisters.
Perth Auxiliary Bishop Peter Quinn blessed the new chapel and infirmary at the Home for the Aged on November 27, 1971.
Originally, the Sisters intended to relocate the Catholic Church in Ora Banda and use it as a chapel at their Nursing Home in Kalgoorlie. However, owing to the poor condition of the old galvanised and timber building, it was decided not to shift it into Kalgoorlie.
Instead, the Sisters decided to build a new brick chapel similar to the architecture of the Ora Banda Church, and dedicated it to the memory of the departed gold prospectors.
A beautiful large stained glass window, which takes up nearly all the eastern side of the chapel, was designed by the Little Sisters in Kalgoorlie and made in Perth.
The image on the stained glass window tells this story of an old prospector on his way home to God after a weary journey through life in the Goldfields. In glorious shades of amber up to the brilliant red colour of the Kalgoorlie landscape, and the hue of purple sky reflects on the form of the old prospector sitting on a mound of stones and sand. He wears the typical slouched corduroy hat, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, tired and thirsty he gazes out across the sandy wastes which roll across the window, in swirls of vivid colours towards the trees, at the end of the window.
In one of the trees can be seen the form of Our Lord on the Cross, bearing down in an attitude of tender compassion towards the tired old prospector, beckoning him on towards a place of peace, serenity and security. There, they depict the “Spirit” of their Home – that there all may find peace and happiness, after the hard struggles in the inexorable heat and hardships of the Goldfields.
In the chapel, the altar, credence table, the top part of the two lecterns and the cantilever from the wall on which the tabernacle is placed, have been built out of lepidolite stone mined from the disused Felspar Mine 20km south of Coolgardie. This stone, when polished, has a beautiful pinky-blue appearance which comes from the lithium mica that is prevalent in the stone; in today’s technology, this mineral is used for making batteries to store up electricity.
From the time that the Little Sisters arrived in Kalgoorlie they gave much of their time to looking after the large number of Aborigines who had come to live on the outskirts of Kalgoorlie after the pastoral properties of the Goldfields could not employ them and their large families any, more due to the Australian Government’s granting equal rights and wages to Aborigines in 1967.
This caused conditions on the out-skirts of the town and reserves to be overcrowded, with food and health being a serious issue, especially in the cold winter months.
The St Vincent de Paul Society who provided a “soup kitchen” during the 1960s-90s was a great help to the Little Sisters’ apostolate for the plight of the Aborigines.
The Little Sisters purchased more land in 1972 close to their Home for the Aged and built an Aboriginal daycare centre to shelter the Aborigines.
They first built what was known as the “Round House,” which was officially opened and blessed by Archbishop Goody on September 17, 1972.
This was built for the Aborigines to come and mingle in a safe, sheltered environment away from the weather and perils of bad society.
The main attraction at the Round House was a large wooden fire, which burnt in the centre of a fully enclosed building; and where the community could sit around and tell their “dream time” stories, and reminisce on the past life they enjoyed in the bush.
With money from the Federal and State Governments and private donations, the Little Sisters built a 23 bed “C” Class Nursing Home for the Aborigines, blessed and opened on May 22, 1974 by Archbishop Goody and Mr Byrne, representing the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Mr Cavanah.
Between 1974-1979, the Parish Priest of Boulder, Fr Toop, was released from parish duties to work fulltime in the Aboriginal Apostolate in Kalgoorlie. This was a great help and support for the Little Sisters of the Poor during that time until he had to return to Perth due to the shortage of priests in the Archdiocese.
During the first half of 1979 the St John of God Brothers arrived in Kalgoorlie to establish a Foundation and help the Aborigines, and they were also a great help for the Little Sisters in establishing a strong apostolate.
But due to the shortage of vocations, the St John of God Order abandoned the idea after six months and returned to the Eastern States.
The Aboriginal Apostolate was very large in Kalgoorlie and, to help the Little Sisters, between 1992-98 Fr Peter Toohey SSC was sent to Kalgoorlie at the request of the Parish Priest to give help to the Aborigines.
During 1993-1995, two Sisters from the Order of the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul came to Kalgoorlie to also help out Fr Toohey and the Little Sisters.
With the onset of the mineral boom on the Goldfields since the mid-1960s, the WA Government re-wrote the Mining Act in the 1970s and ‘80s in favour of the mining companies, and made it harder for the old prospectors to mine their leases.
This also did not encourage many younger prospectors in the latter years to search for the precious metal, and thus now there are very few old prospectors living in the Little Sisters of the Poor Home, as the old ones are gradually departing this life for their eternal reward, and there are very few to replace them.
But with the town’s increasing population and the unending love and charity the Little Sisters had given to the elderly over many years, the Home for the Aged in Kalgoorlie flourished and grew in size with local aged residences.
With extra extensions completed in 1997, Bishop Robert Healy came to Kalgoorlie and blessed and opened the Little Sisters of the Poor Nursing Home, a new office, additional rooms and a hall for functions and concerts on September 20, 1997.
The previous day, the Bishop had attended in Kalgoorlie the 25th anniversary of the “Round House” at the Aboriginal Nursing Home, with celebrations and an open day.
In 2002, the Little Sisters closed their Nursing Home for Aborigines due to the lack of patients caused through the Government building a similar Nursing Home for Aged Aborigines in the Northern Goldfields.
The last six elderly Aboriginal patients who were in the Little Sisters of the Poor Nursing Home were transferred to a New Anglican Home for the Aged that had just been built in Kalgoorlie at that time.
In September 2004, the Missionary Sisters of Charity arrived in Kalgoorlie at the invitation of the Parish Priest, Fr Tony Vallis, to help the poor families and many Aborigines of the Goldfields.
Their work today amongst the poor in the Goldfields is extensive and rewarding. As the years wore on, the Little Sisters found it harder to continue with the lack of vocations to their Order.
Despite the workload being harder for the very few older working Sisters in the Home, they have also been blessed with “wonderful” lay staff to help them.
But it was only after much prayer that the Little Sisters of the Poor had to give into the inevitable and think of eventually leaving. With inquiries, Southern Cross Care were pleased to come to their aid and take over the running of the Nursing Home in the future.
The Parish of Kalgoorlie-Boulder passed on its profound thanks to the Little Sisters of the Poor for their “wonderful, loving work” in the Goldfields and thanked Southern Cross Care for taking on the administration of “such a well established, loved and blessed Home”, and look forward for a great future for the elderly in the Goldfields.