St Bernards High School - Bernardian Yearbook (Fitchburg, MA)

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Mother Mary Bernice

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MM saat ee POPE PAUL VI HIS HOLINESS,

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Faculty 1963-1964 Sister Mary Alphonsa Sister Mary Angeline Sister Mary Anselm Sister Mary Borgia Sister Mary Cecelia Sister Mary Esther Sister Mary Frances Sister Mary Grace Sister Mary James In 1764, the year that marked the incorporation of Fitchburg, a young Irish girl, Nano Nagle, was finishing her education in France. Soon she would enter the gay society of Paris and the French court. But it would not be for long. For an inner voice was urging her to return to her native land. There, in spite of penal laws, she began to instruct the poor children and to open small schools for them. This was the beginning of the order of the Sisters of the Presentation, which today carries on the work of its foundress in all parts of the world. The quints of 1963 in Aberdeen, South Dakota, brought the Sisters of the Presentation into prominence also. Although a teaching order, in this also “the old order changeth, yielding place to new,” for in the early days, when a serious epidemic broke out, the teaching sisters turned nurses when there was no one to take care of the stricken. A grateful community insisted that they continue their nursing work. St. Luke’s hospital was built and here it was that the five little Fischers came into the world.