The Franciscan Missionaries of the Divine Motherhood have recently celebrated a very important week.
On Sunday February 7 the Congregation accepted a new postulant, Lorna Diesta, to their Clapham community. Exactly one week later, on Sunday, February 13, Sister Hazel Buckley celebrated her Golden Jubilee of religious profession. Sister Hazel grew up in a warm, deeply committed Anglican family, but became a Catholic at the age of 19. Four years later, in 1956, she entered the Franciscan Missionaries of the Divine Motherhood at Ladywell Convent, the congregation’s mother house in Godalming, Surrey.
Sister Hazel took her first vows on February 13 1961 and made her final profession five years later in New York state, where she was posted as a teacher to a small parish school. After final profession she became novice mistress before going out, first to Australia and then to New Zealand.
Nowadays the golden jubilarian spends much of her time in spiritual direction.
She is also the one whom the congregation has appointed to walk with Lorna during the coming months of her postulancy, an important time of discernment for both Lorna and the Franciscan Missionaries of the Divine Motherhood.
The Golden Jubilee celebrations took place at Mass in Holy Ghost parish in Balham where, at the end of the liturgy, the parish priest, Fr Stephen Langridge, presented Sister Hazel with a framed papal blessing, acknowledging the many years dedicated to the Lord.
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