The Sis­ters of the Con­gre­ga­tion of the Holy Faith (CHF) will launch their first book–Pres­ence & Ac­tion–on Sat­ur­day (No­vem­ber 26) at 11 am in Cou­va. This year the CHF Sis­ters will mark the 75th an­niver­sary of their Trinidad Foun­da­tion.

In De­cem­ber 1947, this Con­gre­ga­tion from Glas­nevin, Ire­land, set up a foun­da­tion in Wood­brook, and this was re­port­ed in The Catholic News re­port­ed on De­cem­ber 27, 1947.

Pres­ence & Ac­tion be­gins when Sis­ter Mon­i­ca Mc­Sh­er­ry, the Su­pe­ri­or Gen­er­al, Sr Colm­cille Kil­gal­lon, and the first sev­en Irish Re­li­gious Sis­ters ar­rived, and with that, their im­me­di­ate es­tab­lish­ment of schools across the is­land. The ini­tial 1946 let­ter of in­vi­ta­tion to the Con­gre­ga­tion came from His Grace Arch­bish­op Fin­bar Ryan OP.

This book fea­tures ex­tracts from their 75-year archive, in­clud­ing pri­vate let­ters, min­utes of meet­ings, and per­son­al pho­tographs. The book is chrono­log­i­cal­ly or­dered by decades and ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly maps their work across Trinidad, from Wood­brook to places such as Cou­va, Siparia, Pe­nal, San­gre Grande, Va­len­cia, Moru­ga, Pem­broke Street, St Ann’s, and Matelot.

HFC, Couva.

Alison Punch

Cu­rat­ed and com­piled by archivist Dr Kwynn John­son, this his­tor­i­cal record draws from their many doc­u­ments and is com­ple­ment­ed by per­son­al in­ter­views with the sis­ters in Trinidad. It’s a ta­pes­try of the of­fi­cial with the or­di­nary, which weaves sev­er­al sto­ries about the work of these Re­li­gious Sis­ters.

This book places on the na­tion­al record the work of about 70 women. It adds to the cul­tur­al con­ver­sa­tion– their con­tri­bu­tion to Trinidad's ed­u­ca­tion, from 1947 to the present. An­oth­er ma­jor theme which emerges in the book is so­cial jus­tice. It not on­ly finds ex­pres­sion in ed­u­ca­tion in both ur­ban and rur­al Trinidad, but al­so places such as East Port-of-Spain, and the Re­mand Yard at the Port-of-Spain prison.

"These ex­tracts from their pri­vate archive are de­light­ful­ly cu­rat­ed and vi­su­alised in this lim­it­ed-edi­tion book. Pres­ence & Ac­tion makes for a won­der­ful Christ­mas gift," a re­lease stat­ed.

The Trinidad Area Leader Sis­ter Juli­et Ra­jah and the oth­er sis­ters look for­ward to your pres­ence at the book launch. His Grace the Arch­bish­op, Robert Ri­vas OP, will be in at­ten­dance, to cel­e­brate the im­por­tance of archives at the launch.

You can pre-or­der by call­ing: 299-1591, 686-4077 and 780-5820.

Presence & Action

HFC Couva Sr Magdalena, Dr Eric Williams, Sr Colmcille, Archbishop Pantin and Sr Consilio.