Bishop of Down and Connor Dr Patrick Walsh celebrated Mass in west Belfast yesterday to mark 50 years of schooling at St Louise’s Comprehensive College. Hundreds of pupils and staff, past and present, gathered with residents at St Peter’s Cathedral to celebrate the golden jubilee.

Among those attending was Sister Evelyne Franc, the Superioress General of the Daughters of Charity, who made her first visit to Northern Ireland to mark the milestone. Sr Evelyne, a native of Lyons in France, is the head of a community of more than 20,000 Daughters of Charity working in 94 countries.

St Louise’s Secondary Intermediate School was opened by the order on the Falls Road on January 8, 1958, in response to the extension of the school-leaving age to 15. It grew to become reputedly the largest all-girls school in Europe with more than 2,500 pupils in their familiar brown and yellow uniforms.

During yesterday’s Mass, Dr Walsh described St Louise’s as a “caring school with pastoral care of the pupils a very evident priority”. He said this dedication gave pupils “a conviction of their innate dignity and true worth”.

“To do all this was not easy during the turbulent years which marked so much of the 50 years of the school but, like all schools, St Louise’s, under successive principals and committed staff, stood firm against disruptive, indeed often destructive elements inimical to what the school stood for,” Dr Walsh said.

“I take this occasion once more to pay tribute to teachers in every sector of education to whom society owes an enormous debt of gratitude.”

You can read more about this story in the May edition of New Beginnings.