2009

‘I hope in God it will be seen that women in time will do much’

2009 marks 400 years since Yorkshire woman Mary Ward (1585-1685) pioneered the first uncloistered religious order of women modelled on the freedom and mobility of the Jesuits.

Born into a network of Catholic women who suffered persecution and imprisonment for their faith, including butcher’s wife Margaret Clitherow, crushed to death for harbouring priests, she lost 3 uncles in the Gunpowder Plot and escaped to St. Omer in 1609 with a handful of women. The communities and educational work for girls they started spread across Europe, enemies calling them ‘Galloping Girls’ and ‘Jesuitesses’, while Mary Ward insisted, ‘there is no such difference between men & women that women may not do great things’.

She crossed the Alps on foot 3 times in the midst of the 30 Years War and outbreaks of plague to gain papal approval of her new order, but church and society were not ready for such innovations. She was arrested as a heretic in 1631, around the same time as Galileo, and the order suppressed. A small remnant survived in York and overseas from which today Mary Ward’s sisters of the Congregation of Jesus and the Institute of the Blessed Virgin originate. Communities all over the world continue to do groundbreaking work in educational and other fields and invite you to join them in celebrating

MARY WARD JUBILEE 400