4 OCT, 2021. The Chapter body is busy – minute takers, secretary, support sisters responding to our every need, committees galore: steering, liturgy, communications, ambience, facilitators, and busiest of all, the social committee.

4 OCT, 2021. With great joy, we arrived in Accra for the second part of our general chapter. The opening on September 30, was contemplative and moving, as the Central Leadership Team called us to the sacred space and presented symbols recalling the themes that stay with us from our institute conversations, symbols evoking Sint Unum, fire for mission, partnership and collaboration, contemplation, diversity, climate change, and the Actuarial Study. After readings and faith sharing, Institute Leader, Wini Ojo SSL, gave a challenging and encouraging opening address and declared the Chapter open. 

OCT 1, 2021. The Sisters of St Louis’ General Chapter Opening Ritual took place on the evening of September 30, 2021, in Accra, Ghana. In her opening speech which declared the General Chapter open, Institute Leader, Winifred Ojo SSL, stated, “We are therefore present here today because we are a people of hope, we are people with a vision ‘That all may be one’, people called and entrusted with the mission of spreading the good news of this oneness in our world and planet today, not by being a nice cosy and comfortable community, but by being disciples on mission, rooted in and witnessing to the oneness of the God within and among us, in our world and in the whole of creation. We are here not to represent our Areas or communities but to work together on behalf of the whole Institute to discern where this vision is leading us. We are here, not by our own power, but because ‘we believe in the love of our God’ who has called us here.” 

30 SEPT, 2021. The Sisters of St Louis’ General Chapter 2021 will take place in Accra, Ghana, from this evening, September 30, and will run until October 10. The first part of the Chapter has already taken place online in June and July. 

30 SEPT, 2021. On July 16, 2021, the feast of St Anne and the Foundation Day of the Convent in Monaghan, the remains of our Irish Foundress, Mother Genevieve Beale, were reverently and carefully exhumed and reburied in the Convent cemetery. This is where Genevieve was originally buried in 1878. Upon her death, she was laid in a triple coffin in the hope of her later resting in front of the altar of the planned Convent Chapel. The Chapel was built in 1885 and in 1892, 14 years after her death, Genevieve ‘s remains were moved there.

30 SEPT, 2021. On July 13, 2021, 11 Sisters of St Louis gathered in Newmarket, England, for a Leave-taking Service of St Louis Convent, the Old Stable House Retreat Centre, and Colmar Cottage. After 85 years of SSL history, the time has come to ‘let Providence take its course’ and to put the site up for sale. Providence, as Bautain reminds us in Sr Pauline McGovern’s Words for the New Millennium, is much more than resignation to God’s will, but includes the promise of guidance, empowerment and healing.