Founding Days are special days at Rosemont and in others schools and ministries of the Sisters of the Holy Child throughout the world. On these days, October 13 and 15, we celebrate the founding 179 years ago of the Sisters who opened our College in 1921.
Cornelia Connelly opened a school with three women who joined her as postulants on October 13, 1846 in Derby, England. The first Mass was celebrated in the Derby convent two days later on October 15th. This has been a special feast, St. Teresa’s Day, for the Sisters of the Holy Child Jesus ever since.
The Life of Cornelia Connelly
To learn more about the extraordinary life of the Venerable Cornelia Connelly and the Sisters of the Holy Child Jesus, visit the online Cornelia Connelly Library including a timeline of Cornelia’s extraordinary life.
Two Lives of Cornelia Connelly
For a glimpse into two lives of Cornelia Connelly, read the book excerpts in the toggles below. The first is a chapter entitled “Here Beginneth a New Life” from Yes, Lord, Only Yes: A Life of Cornelia Connelly which was written by Elizabeth Mary Strub, SHCJ. The toggle that follows is a chapter entitled “Beginnings in Derby“, from Cornelia Connelly, Founder, Society of the Holy Child Jesus 1809 – 1879, written by Judy Talacchia, SHCJ Associate.
"Here Beginneth a New Life"
So ought all to begin again with the most sweet and holy and loving Child Jesus-a humbled God. cc
THE 13th OF OCTOBER WAS A MEMORABLE DATE on Cornelia’s interior calendar. A heart broken six years before on the Feast of St. Edward was to serve as the cradle of the future Society of the Holy Child Jesus. On this same day in 1846 the cradle was ready and the Society was born.
A small group of women, one with a five-year-old by the hand, made the brief journey from Birmingham north to Derby, arriving at noon. Who were they? Cornelia, of course, and Emily, Newman’s friend, and Mary Ann and Veronica, both youngsters. We can imagine their reactions when these last two first saw their new home. The big convent was empty except for a reception room and a few beds with mattresses and pillows. In the kitchen there was a leg of
mutton in the oven and potatoes and carrots on the stove, but no plates, knives or forks. These they had to borrow from the parish priest before being able to sit down to a meal. Then, they rolled up their sleeves and settled in.
Cornelia had brought with her the draft of a rule drawn up in Rome with the help of Grassi and Pierce, but she had not realized that she was to be both novice and novice mistress. The fact is that all looked to her as leader of the group, and so she was. She was the oldest and the only one with experience of the religious life, an already profound experience. Wiseman, however, treated her as both foundress and beginner. It is true she had much to learn about
the customs and attitudes of English Catholics and would have to buy her experience at a high price.
Two days after their arrival, on the 15th of October, the Feast of St. Teresa, the little community assisted at their first Mass as a religious family. The liturgy was celebrated not in the cavernous church but in a small room with simple adornments-an improved tabernacle and borrowed candlesticks. In this way the Lord of their desires came to dwell among them in the intimacy of their simple beginnings. Cornelia saw this first Mass as the real founding of religious life in the Society of the Holy Child Jesus. Even to this day, the Society celebrates its founding on the feast of St. Teresa.
Cornelia’s spirit of simple joy in giving the Lord a new home and making him known overflowed to her sisters and the people of the area. From the first day she taught her community how to live fully all the typical practices of religious life, but in a natural, unforced
sort of way. She set up a daily timetable which included Mass, spiritual reading, instruction, prayer and work, all in an atmosphere of recollected reverence. Silence helped foster the interior life and the twice-daily recreations were merry and delightful. Then, Cornelia was at her most spontaneous, often breaking into song or initiating a game. Her rejection of enclosure made it possible to involve the sisters from the start in the local apostolate.
For the first time in her life, Cornelia found herself in the midst of extreme poverty. The England she already knew was the England of Alton Towers and Spetchley Park. Derby was a town besmirched by the industrial revolution. The atmosphere was thick with factory smoke, and at the bottom of the convent garden an open sewer flowed. Masses of immigrants from Ireland crowded into Derby in search of work in the mines and factories. Workers could attend school only at night and on Sundays, so Cornelia and Emily organized classes within their meager free time. During the day, the sisters staffed a poor school for 200 or more children of whom never more than 60 were able to attend on a typical day.
"Beginnings in Derby"
Wiseman found a vacant convent in the industrial city of Derby for Cornelia and three women who joined her as postulants. He was anxious to have them begin teaching immediately since Derby was flooded with poor Irish Catholic immigrants fleeing the potato famine. Cornelia was immediately faced with numerous challenges. First and foremost, she had no formal training in religious life. Two of the three postulants were recent converts like her. She was expected to be their mentor in religious life while at the same time being a novice herself. The convent turned out to be a huge Gothic building in deplorable condition and with a large debt attached to it. For the first time in her life, Cornelia would live in extreme poverty. The little group was expected to run a day school, a night school and a Sunday school for hundreds of poor girls. Instead of the small, gradual “Bethlehem beginning” Cornelia had envisioned, she was thrown headlong into a chaotic situation that would have tested an experienced religious!
The most severe test was still to come. Bishop Wiseman, like all British Catholics, was extremely sensitive to perceptions of the Church by Protestants, and with good reason. The restoration of the British Catholic hierarchy in 1850, for example, led to charges of “papal aggression:” Pierce, who had followed Cornelia to England as chaplain to Lord Shrewsbury, had already been denied the weekly visits he had enjoyed in Rome with Cornelia and the children, for fear of causing scandal. The presence of children in a convent, Wiseman reasoned, could be equally misunderstood.
He insisted that Ady be enrolled in a boarding school rather than a day school and Frank, only 5, in a boarding school for young boys. The bishop assured Cornelia that this arrangement would only be for the year of her formal novitiate training. Cornelia was devastated but felt she could not refuse the precarious position of the Church in England and her dependence on Wiseman for material and ecclesial support. Fully expecting to have her children back with her at the end of the year, she sent them off, but the emotional cost was huge. One of the first postulants, Mary Ann Walk (who became Sister Aloysia) remembered, “It was, I think, one of the sacrifices she had to make:’
FOUNDATION DAY
Cornelia and her band had left for Derby on October 13, the feast of St. Edward, exactly six years to the day that Pierce had announced his decision to become a Catholic priest. Cornelia must have been struck the coincidence and the many changes that had occurred in her life that fateful day.
Even with the conditions that greeted her at the Derby convent, she was ready to have an opening Mass only two days later. In a small room, furnished, she and the three postulants assisted at their first Mass as a religious society. October 15, the feast of St. Teresa of Avila, would be observed as the formal founding of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus.
THE FIRST YEAR
Despite the many challenges, Cornelia enthusiastically went to work. She drew from the deep well of her relationship with God to guide the poor in the spiritual life. Weekly talks by their Jesuit chaplain taught them the Ignatian way of praying that had been so formative for Cornelia. Using a draft rule of life that she had developed with Pierce and Fr. Grassi she set up a daily schedule that provided time for both prayer and apostolate work. The schools run by her small group were soon recognized by the government for their high quality of education. As word spread, more women came to join the new religious order. Against all odds, both the Society and their apostolate were taking root.
