Spirituality
We offer spiritual guidance, Ignatian excercises and retreats.
Trailblazing women writing their own story
Find out more about where and when it all started.
Born in 1585, Mary Ward was one of the first women to believe that women could and should be actively involved in the apostolic life of the Catholic Church.
Due to political and historical challenges, this Irish pioneer founded a second branch of our congregation in 1821. She was totally dedicated to her mission and endeavoured to provide a good education, running boarding schools as well as free schools for the local children.
In 2025, the two branches of Mary Ward’s foundation were finally able to become one, thus fulfilling Mary Ward’s wishes and dreams.
There are fifty paintings, each 142 x 105 cm, known as the ‘Painted Life of Mary Ward’ that show her spiritual journey. It is most probable that they were painted by various artists somewhere between Flanders and South Tyrol in the second half of the seventeenth century.
The Church proclaimed Mary Ward “Venerable” in 2009. She was recognised as a woman of “undoubted heroic virtue” four centuries after her institute was suppressed and she was imprisoned. Now the institute must complete the journey
For those who are interested in diving deeper into our history, we have assembled a series of publications and talks about the CJ and its origins.
