ARCTIC SUMMER BEATS OURS!
C.H.' Reporter
AWINDOW on the Church in Norway was presented at Westminster Cathedral Hall on Friday and Saturday with a Norwegian Festival opened by Sir Alec Guinness and organised by the English Dominican Sisters to help stimulate interest in the Sisters' child welfare work in Northern Norway.
The apostolic delegate to Great Britain, Archbishop O'Hara, was one of the speakers at the festival, and a Norwegian Dominican, Fr, Thorale Norheim gave a superb piano recital after the archbishop's address.
Films were shown to give visitors a glimpse of life in Norway. Visitors who imagined that it must be freezingly cold above the Arctic circle in Northern Norway got a surprise when Mr. Gerik Schjelclerup, one of the festival's speakers, said: "This summer, when the rest of Northern Europe
was wet and cold, Northern Norway had a most glorious summer with almost tropical heat; one man was even said to have died from sun-stroke."
" Now you may ask how it happened that Dominican nuns from England came to work in this faraway little Norwegian town population approximately 15,000. I can only say it was meant to be. A priest visiting England told English Dominican Sisters of a work which the Norwegian Bishop Wimper hoped to start in Bodo, where he had bought a house and built a church.
"The bishop needed assistance. Could the English Dominican Sisters help? It was decided that they could, and in 1953 four Sisters left England for Bodo. They received a great welcome on arrival.
" The children of the town were immediately attracted to them. They called on the nuns at all hours of the day. So great was the stream of little visitors (all wanting attention) that the Sisters decided special premises were needed to work for children ".
The special premises " included a nursery school, rooms for games. dancing and handicrafts-built at a cost of £24,000. Nearly £20.000 is still needed to clear the builder's bill, but Saturday's festival has touched many hearts and promises of donations are trickling in to Mother Ansgar. 0.P., at the Dominican Convert in Portobello Road, London.