Mary Ward Symposium
For this final year of Jubilee 2009 - 2011 a Mary Ward Symposium held at Heythrop College, London on September 10th 2011 was attended by about 70 people.
The speakers who made this day a great success were: Brian O'Leary SJ - an Irish Jesuit, speaker and author, who has worked in the field of Ignatian spirituality for many years.
He gave a superb overiew of Ignatian spirituality, with the greater glory of God as its aim and the Spiritual Exercises as the driving force; the sharing of the Ignatian way of life with others, including women religious and lay people, and today's deeper understanding of the Ignatian spirit, with more still to come.
Mary Wright IBVM - a former general superior of the IBVM Loreto branch of Mary Ward's Institute, who is now working as a canon lawyer in Rome for the Vatican department responsible for religious orders and institutes worldwide.
She described the four great Rules, Benedictine, Augustinian, Carmelite and Franciscan, which would have been put before Mary Ward to choose from for her new Institute, and explained why for Mary Ward 'they seemed not that which God would have done'.
Gill Goulding CJ - Professor of Systematic Theology and Spirituality at the SJ Regis College, University of Toronto, Canada.
She reminded us of the influence of the Jesuit missionary priests on Mary Ward in her childhood as the natural background for the revelation 'Take the Same', and expanded this with an exposition of what 'The Same' meant for Mary and her companions.
She reminded us of the influence of the Jesuit missionary priests on Mary Ward in her childhood as the natural background for the revelation 'Take the Same', and expanded this with an exposition of what 'The Same' meant for Mary and her companions.
During the day a building at Heythrop was named in honour of Mary Ward and a copy of her portrait unveiled by Sr Jane Livesey CJ (centre) and Sr Anne McEvoy IBVM (right)