Submitted by Barbara Kowalski, Archivist for the FCJ Area of Australia.
International Archives Week is a time to celebrate and appreciate the value of archives in preserving our FCJ history and identity. This year’s theme is #ArchivesForJustice: Rights, Memory & Futures, certainly a fitting one for the FCJ Society.
Our diverse collection includes papers, documents, books, photographs, paintings, textiles and artefacts. We have handwritten records documenting the Sisters’ arrival in Melbourne in 1882 and their correspondence with the archbishop and parish priests of the time and with the General Superior across the ocean. We hold annals going back to 1882 for every community in Australia and Asia-Australia, providing a rich record of FCJ charism and history. Many of our photos go back to those early days.
We have Sr Kathleen Mary Ride fcJ to thank for the establishment of the archives and her professional and rigorous approach to historical records. In 1980 she started work on a heritage room in preparation for the 1982 Australian FCJ Centenary. Since then our collection has grown to over 250 boxes of papers as well as over 3000 photos. Kathleen Mary also set up FCJ archives in Canada, USA and Ireland and was instrumental in establishing the Association of Catholic Archivists in Victoria.
Archives are so much more than boxes of old documents gathering dust. From telegrams to faxes, reel to reel tapes to DVDs, aerogrammes to emails, each item in the FCJ Australian Archive tells a story of Marie Madeleine’s vision and inspiration as carried out in this part of the world by our FCJ ancestors and by the sisters and their colleagues today.
