Celebrating a

150-Year Dream for the Kingdom!
THREE hundred years ago Pere Chauvet, a young French priest, had a dream.
Looking about him, in his village of Levesville, Pere Chauvet saw his church in ruins and his people in poverty and sickness. His dream of restoration attracted four young women who spent their nights at home and their days working among the poor and sick people of the parish.
With the encouragement of the Bishop of Chartres, Pere Chauvet expanded his dream and invited the women to live together as a community, sharing a house beside the parish church and a simple rule of life. The women opened a small school in the presbytery and continued to visit the needy people of the area.
With such humble beginnings, Pere Chauvet had no idea that his dream for Levesville would expand, despite death and persecution, to form new communities and to cross national boundaries — that one day his small community would become the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Paul of Chartres with thousands of sisters in five continents.
One hundred and fifty years later, Dr. William Tandy had a similar dream for his parishioners in the market town of Banbury, England, and he was led to the Sisters of St. Paul of Chartres.
Pere Chauvet's dream and Dr. Tandy's dream interacted to form a new sequence of events. Missioned by the Mother House at Chartres, Sister Genevieve Dupuis and Sister Joseph Marie Sapiens arrived in Banbury on June 26th 1847. Here the dream-plot took a different twist with Genevieve being asked to found a new and independent Congregation. The new Congregation adopted the name, 'Sisters of Charity of St. Paul, the Apostle', and later established its Mother House at Selly Park, Birmingham.
Every dream has moments of beginning and moments of ending, moments of life and moments of death. Over the last 150 years the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of St. Paul has experienced many such moments. By the time of her death in 1903, Genevieve Dupuis had opened eighty-eight convents in England, Scotland and Wales. After the death the dream continued with developments in Ireland, Canada, South Africa and, more recently, in Romania.
The years have also seen many closures and endings, but the sisters still maintain a small presence in all of these countries except Canada.
In South Africa the dream formed another new sequence with the Sisters of St. Brigid being founded as a diocesan Congregation and eventually becoming autonomous.
Developments in Romania echo the original beginnings at both Levesville and Banbury. In the early 1990s a parish priest, Fr. Petru Paulet, asked for sisters to work in his parish and to begin a school at Campuling Muscel. In 1997, 150 years after Genevieve Dupuis came to Banbury, present day sisters are responding to another Romanian priest's request to work in his parish and to start a little school in his presbytery at Motru. Once again, local young women are attracted to the dream of working with those in need, and in April 1997 four Romanian women made their first vows as Sisters of St. Paul.
The dream of every woman in the Congregation is to be rooted in Christ and to choose to stand with and for powerless people.
In recent years people of both sexes, and Christians of all denominations have been invited, as Associate Members, to share in this dream for the Kingdom. There are now several groups who meet in England and Ireland to pray, discuss and dream together.
The dream is, paradoxically, fragile and strong. May we all continue to be dream catchers and dream encouragers for the Kingdom, and may the members of the next millennium celebrate an even greater heritage — a heritage beyond even our fondest dreams!