Happy Feast of the Sacred Heart and welcome to all alumnae from all corners of the world to the website of AMASC (Association Mondiale des Anciennes du Sacre Coeur) at www.amasc-sacrecoeur.org. We came "online" on Monday, 26th May, 1998, on the Feast of St Madeleine Sophie Barat, the Foundress of the Society of the Sacred Heart. She will be the Patron of the site.

I have just come to my office at the Curran Foundation after a very beautiful and moving Mass at Kincoppal-Rose Bay, the School of the Sacred Heart in Sydney. The School celebrated the Feast of the Sacred Heart today as they will be on vacation on June 19th. The liturgy was focussed on Reconciliation. The Kincoppal-Rose Bay Liturgy Committee gives such life and meaning to the Eucharistic celebrations of the School. The students will be integrally involved in preparing our liturgies for the XII World Conference here in Sydney in 2002.

Today the School community had an Elder of the Aboriginal community as special guest and during the Mass, the students and staff offered expressions of sorrow for the hurt caused so many indigenous Australians by the forced dislocation of their families due to the removal of many children from their mothers. The students presented the Elder, Max Wilson,  with a Sorrow Book containing signatures and messages from all those who wished to participate. This book will be taken by him back to his community in inner city Sydney.

I am personally very involved in the Australians for Reconciliation movement and my humanity has been so personally enriched by seeing the healing in Aboriginal people by at last having their pain recognised by so many.  Many white Australians in the past thought they were pursuing correct policies in removing the children from their communities and putting them into institutions to be educated;  but the trauma and loss psychologically crippled many -- parents as well as the children. Public recognition of this trauma and deep hurt suffered by many of the so-called "Stolen Children" and their families is hopefully part of their healing process and will in turn bring back self respect and pride to Aboriginal people in their culture and their Aboriginal identity. I believe this healing can make a huge difference in the Aboriginal peoples being able to take their rightful place as equals in Australian society.

Another group of people in Australia who were removed from their families were British children, particularly during and at the end of World War II. This week a delegation of Parliamentarians from the United Kingdom is visiting Australia to meet with these "children" - many of whom are in their 40’s and 50’s -- to see what the British Government can do to reunite these people with their families in the UK. Many had been told their parents were dead; many had all their personal records destroyed.

On the actual Feast of the Sacred Heart I shall be attending a special dinner in Wellington, New Zealand. "Erskine", School of the Sacred Heart, Island Bay, Wellington, New Zealand closed in the mid 1980’s - the only Sacred Heart School in New Zealand now is Baradene in Auckland.    What started as a class reunion has turned into a School Reunion and there will be 900 at the evening Mass to celebrate the Feast of the Sacred Heart, followed by a formal dinner in Wellington Town Hall.

I am delighted by such enthusiasm and spirit so I shall fly over for the evening, returning to Sydney at 5 pm the following afternoon in time to attend a Gala Dinner here in Sydney for 1,000 guests to support Kincoppal-Rose Bay redevelopment of the old library into a performing arts centre and a visual arts studio. The following day, the Governor General of Australia, Sir William Deane and his alumna wife, Lady Helen Deane, will officially open the new library and boarding house. We shall be utilising these areas in 2002.

In wishing you all a Happy Feast, I pray for you and your families, your communities and your countries, that through us the love of Christ can be manifested to make a better and more loving world for all. We have such a responsibility as Christians to see and recognise the reflection of God in the other -- and to love one another. It also brings so much happiness to so many, including ourselves.

Now with such pride I introduce you to two wonderful people who have been "giving of their all" over the last weeks in order to establish our AMASC website.

The Editor of our Website is Josephine Barcelon, an alumna of Kincoppal-Rose Bay, School of the Sacred Heart, in Sydney, Australia. Josephine graduated in 1976 and then attained her MA from Oxford (UK). Josephine is calm, insightful and wonderful with words. She is so interested in AMASC - its values and its opportunities.

The Webmaster (designer and technical operator of our site) is Josephine's 16 year old daughter, Antonia Hayes, who is currently a pupil at Kincoppal-Rose Bay in Year 10. Antonia writes the language to enable our pages to be laid down and designed. Antonia also takes everything "in her stride" [we shall include wonderful Australian colloquialisms from time to time to make the language more colourful! -- you may ask for translations, where necessary, through the guest book!!].

We trust you will find our site interesting. Please give other alumnae and students our address www.amasc-sacrecoeur.org so our world wide alumnae news is received and acted upon by as many as possible. We hope that we shall be able to think globally and act locally. Our site will be interactive, so we welcome your comments, suggestions and news in our guest book.

We hope over the next four years to as well as inform, to open up conversations between us all -- to share ideas, experiences of life journeys and opportunities. We invite you to participate.

Trish Burns
President • AMASC
Sydney • Australia

Sister May Hinde rscj (Central Team), Trish Burns and Carolina Jaimes Branger (Venezuelan President) with Taiwanese alumnae behind. Rachel Chen (Taiwanese President) on far right.

It is a great privilege as well as a pleasure to serve as Editor of the Amasc Website.

As members of a global organisation, we are fortunate to be the first generation of Sacre Coeur alumnae to have access to instantaneous communications technology, enabling us to converse with each other or share information with virtually no concessions to space or time, no matter where we are in the world.

The words you are reading now are being conveyed to you from Sydney, Australia via our Web Site server in San Diego, California USA. How extraordinary this would have seemed to our Foundress and Patron, St Madeleine Sophie, or to the many pioneering Religious of the Sacred Heart who travelled great distances and devoted their lives to bring the unique gift of a Sacred Heart education to our precursors and to us, in so many countries around the world.

Here in Sydney, the first five Religious who established our first School at Rose Bay travelled for 39 difficult and dangerous days from Southampton in England in 1882. That may seem a long time ago, but - and this still sounds familiar to us today - they were responding to a real need for Catholic education when the Australian government of the day introduced laws withdrawing financial support from Church schools, making education ‘compulsory, secular and free’.

Today, we may not need to risk our lives on the seas or travel to unknown corners of the world knowing we may never see our homes again, but we still need to give of our talents, our voices and our commitment to issues and challenges in our own countries and internationally whenever we, as Sacre Coeur alumnae, can make a difference. With respect for our own cultures and those of others, it is up to each of us to determine how to glorify the gift of formation and education we have all received. In the words of Mother Janet Stuart, one of the great Provincials-general of the Society, we have all been given a foundation based on: ‘personal worth, worth of character, strength of principles, anchorage in faith.’

As Editor, I welcome all your contributions and comments on this Amasc Website. I hope easy communication helps us to live and to affirm our common bonds as Sacre Coeur alumnae, and to bring us to greater understanding of our individual paths and our universal goals.

To conclude this opening Editorial, I would like to share with you some fragments of a poem by Jorge Luis Borges, a poet of the universal experience of humankind, in both the original Spanish and in translation:

From: OTRO POEMA DE LOS DONES / ANOTHER POEM OF GIFTS

Gracias quiero dar al divino
Laberinto de los efectos y de las causas
Por la diversidad de las criaturas
Que forman este singular universo,

I want to give thanks to the divine
Labyrinth of causes and effects
For the diversity of beings
That form this singular universe,

[and]...For love, which lets us see others
As God sees them...

Josephine Barcelon
Editor