ABOUT THE CONGREGATION OF JESUS & MARY

In the Light of History;

After the disruption caused by the French Revolution thousands of children were left without education. In response to this situation many new religious Congregations sprung up to undertake the work of education. In all parts of France these groups appeared and with their help children were educated, the poor were helped and sufferings of every kind were alleviated.

It was within the framework of this period of history and its urgent needs for education, that the Congregation of Jesus & Mary was born. A young woman named Claudine Thevenet responded in 1818 to an interior call from God, and set out to give her life for a great cause, the education of children.

The first Convent of Jesus & Mary began as an orphanage. An early account says, “Here the children would be taught first and foremost, to know and love God. Next they would receive an elementary education and than be trained to earn their living when they were old enough. With this end in view a loom was installed so that the elder girls might be taught the lucrative trade of silk weaving, and a young woman, an expert in this trade, was engaged to teach them. The first pupil was an abandoned child. No beginning could have been more modest; one child, one loom, one workwoman”.

Continuing on from those humble beginnings, the Congregation of Jesus & Mary is to found today in several countries, spread across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and North and South America, carrying the banner of education entrusted to it by its Foundress. In what is now Pakistan, the French Sisters started the first school in Sialkot in 1856. Twenty years later four Sisters left Agra for Lahore, the capital of the Punjab, reaching on November 17th 1876, to start the new convent. And so today 125 years later, we proudly carry forward the flame of education they lit, serving our country by educating its future women.