Loreto House System

Loreto House System

Loreto House System2023-10-12T16:00:18+10:00
In honour and recognition of our origins, our four Houses are all named after significant women in the history of Loreto.

 

WARD (BLUE)   |  BARRY (YELLOW)  |  MULHALL (RED)  |  MORNANE (GREEN)

At Loreto, participation in all inter-house competitions and events allows students the opportunity to develop connections with their Loreto sisters across the year levels.

Each year, students contend for the House Spirit Cup, a College event characterised by friendly and fierce rivalry. Houses at Loreto are led by 2 House Captains and 3 House Representatives from each year level.

Mary Ward

Ward / Blue House

Mary Ward was born on 23 January 1585 in Mulwith in Yorkshire, England and was the foundress of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (IVBM), also referred to as the Loreto Sisters. Her ideal of an active congregation of religious women governing themselves was too advanced for the Church of her time; her work was suppressed and she herself denounced as a heretic. Only in 1909 was Mary Ward’s status as founder of the IBVM acknowledged by the Pope and in 2009 the church declared her ‘venerable’, recognising her as a woman of ‘heroic virtue’. Mary Ward dies on 30 January 1645 and was buried near Heworth, Yorkshire. Her institute exists today worldwide under the names Congregation of Jesus (CJ) and Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (IBVM Loreto) with approximately 3,000 sisters in 44 countries across five continents.

Mother Gonzaga Barry

Barry / Yellow House

In 1875, at the invitation of the Bishop of Ballarat, Gonzaga Barry led the first group of Loreto Sisters to the Australian colonies and was to become one of the most significant figures in Australian Catholic education. She embraced educational initiatives from kindergarten to tertiary level and founded teacher training colleges in Ballarat and Melbourne.

Born in 1834 in Wexford, Ireland, Barry was educated at Loreto Gorey and Rathfarnham and joined the Institute at the age of 19. She died at Mary’s Mount, Ballarat on 4 March 1915 and is buried there in the small garden cemetery.

Mother Stanislaus Mulhall

Mulhall / Red House

Mother Stanislaus Mulhall, one of the thirteen children in her family, was born in Carlow, Ireland in 1851 and christened Barbara. She was a boarder at Loreto Abbey Rathfarnham, Dublin, at the same time as Mother Gonzaga Barry.

Barbara entered the IBVM and was professed in 1871, followed by her long appointment as Mistress of Novices, a title she took with her when she arrived in Australian in 1883.  Following the death of Mother Gonzaga Barry in 1915, she was appointed Provincial.  Mother Stanislaus Mulhall died in 1923 and is buried in Ballarat.

Mother Stanislaus Mornane

Mornane / Green House

Mother Stanislaus Mornane was born in Melbourne in 1858, christened Anastasia and called Annie by her family. In 1876 she began at Loreto Mary’s Mount, Ballarat, where she met Mother Gonzaga Barry.

In 1879, Annie joined them as the first Australian to become a member of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (IBVM). Upon entering the IBVM, she took Stanislaus as her religious name. After 64 years as a nun, she died in 1943 and is buried in the Loreto Normanhurst cemetery.

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