Friends of Romania - Rosie Hoban

The FCJ Sisters today have three communities in Rumania. Rosie Hoban talks with one of the three pioneers who began there, Sr Margaret Kennedy.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the countries of Eastern Europe were open once more to religious communities. One of them, Romania, has its own Australian connection.

In 1994, five years after the fall of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, three FCJ sisters were sent there—two, Srs Mary Kelly (from Canada) and Imelda Zandoná (from Italy) to Galati, and one, Australian Sr Margaret Kennedy, to Bucharest.

Margaret had originally met the Sisters during her school years at Vaucluse College, the FCJ School in Richmond.

‘The sisters always showed great care for us and our families’, Margaret says. ‘They were always keen to know how everyone was going. I thought of them as very caring and gentle and, at the same time, strong women.’

The FCJs, the Faithful Companions of Jesus, came to Australia in the 1880s. Their foundress, Mary Madeleine d’Houet, was inspired by the Jesuit tradition and took their constitutions for her new religious order, founded in Amiens, France, in 1820.

Margaret entered the novitiate of the order, which was then in Australia rather than Belgium because of World War II. She was professed in 1947 and studied first in Ireland then back in Australia. She began teaching at the Sisters’ large school in Benalla, in country Victoria. The school, which opened in 1900, was the only secondary school in the area until 1934, servicing a huge area. She spent twenty years there and another ten back in Melbourne as Regional Superior of the FCJ Sisters before heading to Paris in 1980 to head a community. There her French was refined and her understanding of Companionship strengthened.

In 1983 Margaret was asked to come back to Australia to work as principal of the Melbourne Girls School, Genazzano, another of the FCJ schools.

During these years at Genazzano, the voices of dissent against the Romanian dictator Ceausescu were growing stronger. His response was swift and brutal, killing thousands of Romanians who sought democracy or freedom of speech.

The Rumanian people rose up against Ceausescu and he was overthrown during a revolution in the last days of 1989. But the country, once rich and prosperous, had been run into the ground and it was now very poor. A great pall of silence and suspicion had also enveloped the country and its people. It was into this place that the Sisters, responding to a request from the Pope, went in 1994.

‘From 1948 to 1989 under the Communists, Catholic churches and hospitals had been closed and nuns and priests had been forced to flee. After the Revolution, the Pope asked religious orders to move back into the country to help the people re-establish their Catholic faith and structures’, Margaret explains.

Many nuns and priests, who had continued to teach the faith had been imprisoned, killed or had fled back to their homes or to Europe. Rumania had been a dangerous place for evangelising Catholics until the Revolution of 1989 heralded religious freedom back into the country. In 1994, Margaret went to Bucharest to work at an Institute of Theology that the far-sighted Archbishop Robu of Bucharest had set up. The Institute, which was affiliated with the University of Bucharest, had three faculties—theology, art and social sciences and attracted many young Catholics, particularly from the countryside.

Margaret was struck by the beauty of the country and desperation of the people to learn, seeing education and the ability to speak English as a way to rebuild their broken country and also as a passport to freedom.

She was also struck by the Rumanian Catholics’ great joy at being able to proclaim their faith publicly after decades of oppression. Churches were crowded and Palm Sunday processions were exciting as people lined the streets singing and waving.

‘I arrived on a Wednesday and began teaching the next Monday. The young people were so hungry to learn. They wanted to learn all sorts of English, old English, Shakespeare, everything’, Margaret says. ‘The Rumanians are a very cultured people and they love music and languages. Most spoke French and wanted to learn more languages, especially English.’

Teaching Shakespeare, with just one copy of Macbeth in a class of thirty, proved challenging. There was no library to borrow from and no books to buy in the country even if you had the money. It was this that inspired Margaret to call upon her friends back in Australia at Genazzano.

In what seemed no time at all, sixteen boxes of books arrived in Bucharest, including thirty or more copies of Macbeth. This was the beginning of the Friends of Romania that now operates within the Genazzano network. The organisation’s support for the work of the FCJ Sisters in Romania has grown in strength. Each year a group of sixty volunteers make Christmas cakes during the September holidays. And the Friends of Rumania run a book fair every October. Proceeds from the sale of the cakes and books go towards FCJ projects in Rumania.

As well, Friends of Rumania were set up in Italy and Canada to support the other FCJ sisters who work in the industrial city of Galati.

Sr Imelda, the Italian sister, worked in one of the infamous orphanages where babies were kept in appalling conditions, underfed and with nothing but the cold floor to sit on. Within weeks of her arrival, a truck, driven by a priest and parishioners from Turin, arrived loaded with supplies for the orphanage.

The support from around the world was vital for the sisters to do their work. For Margaret’s students, the ongoing aid from overseas made their learning and lives easier. But the poverty of the human spirit was perhaps the greatest challenge. These were people who had been told not to speak about anything for fear someone would
report their ideas to authorities and they would be punished.

‘It was my greatest joy to see these students grow in dignity and joy, says Margaret. ‘To see them develop ambitions for what they wanted in life. Their spirits had been subdued and they had to be constantly nourished.’

Margaret spent nine years in Rumania. A highlight was the opening in 2001 of the FCJ spirituality Centre in Bucharest, a place where people can come to develop their faith through a variety of programs, retreats and speakers.

Another highlight was the entry into the FCJs of a sister from Rumania, Luminata Popescu, who expresses her thanks to the order: ‘There are no words to thank God and the Sisters enough for everything I have received’.

The Friends of Rumania Book Fair will be held over the weekend of 13-14 October in the Sacred Heart Hall, cnr Cotham Rd and St John’s Pde, Kew (Victoria). Donations of books for the fair are still welcome — contact Julie Chamberlin on 03 9853 6527. She will also provide information and order forms for the Christmas cakes.