Making his first visit to Connelly School of the Holy Child, Washington Cardinal Wilton Gregory encouraged students there to continue the legacy of Cornelia Connelly, who founded the Society of the Holy Child Jesus that sponsors the school for young women in Potomac, Maryland. He celebrated the school’s Founders Day Mass on Oct. 15, 2021, to close a yearlong celebration of the 175th anniversary of the religious order’s founding in England in 1846.
“One of her (Cornelia Connelly’s) favorite sayings was ‘Actions not words,’” the cardinal said, voicing the phrase that is the motto of the Holy Child sisters and that Catholic school. He added that the order’s foundress “challenged people in her world to be busy with the tasks that lie ahead of them, and that is the challenge that you face.”
Before the Mass, Ogechi Akalegbere, the Christian service coordinator at Holy Child, said a key way that students there live out Cornelia Connelly’s legacy is through their service to the community.
“Service is infused in all aspects of the school, even the curriculum,” she said, noting that in addition to participating in activities through the Christian service department, Holy Child students on sports teams, in clubs and in leadership groups there also take part in service activities.
Later Akalegbere noted several examples of service by Holy Child students, including Crossing Paths, which she said is a program where students through Zoom engage in intergenerational conversations with older adults experiencing isolation.
“Students grow in confidence and wisdom through mutual sharing and storytelling,” she said. “The beauty and power of encounter is experienced through the power of technology, and I have enjoyed seeing the fruits of these relationships that have blossomed beyond the program.”
Working with Potomac Community Resources, Holy Child students have hosted parties on campus for teens and adults with intellectual differences, and during the pandemic, they have partnered with that agency to create virtual programming to continue those bonds of friendship. The school has also continued its tradition of students making and delivering sandwiches to Martha’s Table and helping to serve dinner at Shepherd’s Table for those experiencing food insecurity.
Connelly School of the Holy Child, established in 1961, is a college preparatory school for young women in grades 6 through 12 and currently has 350 students. Holy Child is part of a network of 10 schools in the United States and of more than 30 worldwide sponsored by the Society of the Holy Child Jesus.
Akalegbere offered words of welcome to Cardinal Gregory at the beginning of Mass, thanking him for his leadership and his commitment to young people, and for joining their school community as they marked the 175th anniversary of the founding of the society.
The Mass was celebrated on the feast day of St. Teresa of Avila, and Cardinal Gregory said that saint who helped reform her Carmelite community in Spain in the 16th century, and Cornelia Connelly who helped provide better educational opportunities to schoolchildren in 19th century England, faced a problem that he said is still found in the United States in the 21st century.
“It is a problem that continues to occur when people underestimate what women can accomplish,” the cardinal said.
Cardinal Gregory encouraged the students, whatever their dreams might be, perhaps of becoming a scientist or a doctor or an educator or an explorer, to set out with the same determination as St. Teresa of Avila and Cornelia Connelly did. Those women, he said, probably heard men tell them “‘You can’t do that,’ (but) they didn’t listen.”
“Now it is up to you, the young women of 21st century America, to accomplish your dreams,” the cardinal said.
Washington’s archbishop said Cornelia Connelly and St. Teresa of Avila “became fruitful branches on the vine that is Christ,” and he told the students, “that is my prayer for you.”
Cornelia Connelly’s legacy continues in their school, he said, encouraging them, as they discover “what the Lord might ask of you in your own lives, to be courageous, to be brave, to be honest, to be determined. As Cornelia Connelly would say, ‘Ladies, actions, not words!”
The Holy Child students, gathered in the school gymnasium for the Mass, sang a “Hymn to the Holy Child” during Communion. During the anniversary year, the musical departments from the society’s network of schools sang that hymn together online.
Students offered intercessions in English, Spanish, Portuguese and French. According to the school’s website, Holy Child currently serves students from 73 international families. The gathering hymn, “We are Many Parts” by Marty Haugen, included the refrain, “We are many parts, we are all one body, And the gifts we have, we are given to share…”
The intercessions read by the Holy Child students included prayers that they will respond to the poor and hungry with generous hearts, and live out Cornelia Connelly’s adage “Actions, not words,” every day, and that the sisters in the Society of the Holy Child Jesus may be blessed in their ministry.
Before the Mass, Holy Child Sister Connie Craig – a member of that religious community for 65 years who led Connelly School of the Holy Child as its principal from 1969-73 and also taught history, religion and Latin there over the years, said she admired Cornelia Connelly’s strength.
“She was a very, very strong woman and innovative as an educator,” she said.
Cornelia Connelly founded the Society of the Holy Child Jesus in England in 1846, and the sisters’ primary ministry was educating mill workers, mostly girls, and poor children, offering classes at night and on Sundays to provide an education to an overlooked population.
Sister Connie, one of the gift bearers at the Mass, also noted how Cornelia Connelly, before founding her order, was a wife and a mother who greatly loved her family.
Cornelia Peacock, a native of Philadelphia, married Pierce Connelly, an Episcopalian minister, and they had five children. Their baby daughter Mary Magdalene died six weeks after birth. Their son John Henry died in an accident when he was 2. Another son, Mercer, died of yellow fever at the age of 20.
After he and his wife converted to Catholicism, Pierce Connelly felt called to become a Catholic priest. According to a biography of Cornelia Connelly on the society’s website, before her husband could be ordained, she was obliged to take a vow of chastity, and she was encouraged to enter a religious order.
That biography details how Cornelia Connelly, after founding her religious community, endured “her greatest personal sufferings,” when Pierce Connelly later renounced his priesthood and his Catholic faith and removed their three surviving children from the schools they were attending and denied Cornelia contact with them, hoping to force her to return to him as his wife.
“Her heart was broken in so many ways in her lifetime,” Sister Connie said.
The website of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus notes that Cornelia Connelly in her suffering “clung steadfastly to God. She wrote in her notebook, ‘I belong all to God,’ and this total belonging freed her to give herself to others. Her love for God grew, and she tried to live her life as a continuous act of love. She endured suffering and learned not to be embittered by it. Joy became one of her hallmarks and a hallmark of Holy Child education.”
Reflecting on Cornelia Connelly’s legacy, Ogechi Akalegbere, the Christian Service coordinator at Holy Child, said in an email interview, “Cornelia, like many other women and men in our Church’s history, was not perfect and did not have an easy life. Her story is marked with trials and tragedies, but in all of that she was steadfast and resilient. In her story, students and adults can see the possibility to overcome obstacles and achieve what God calls us to be. I know that persistence and steadfast faith inspires so many in this community as it inspires me.”
Asked how she hopes Holy Child students follow Cornelia Connelly’s example, Sister Connie said she hopes they have “a love for God, a strong love as she had, to be able to deal with her many problems in a way that was comforting to all.”
The longtime Holy Child sister noted that a Mass celebrating the 175th anniversary of the society was going to be held that weekend at the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Philadelphia, Cornelia Connelly’s native city.
Sister Connie, who lives about a mile from Connelly School of the Holy Child, said she sees Cornelia Connelly’s spirit in the school today.
“The school is filled with love,” she said, adding that it is also filled with joy, another quality their order’s foundress was known for. “These kids are happy kids,” she said.
In remarks after the Mass, Catherine Easby-Smith Albornoz, a 1998 graduate of Holy Child who now serves as the school’s head of mission and campus minister, said, “We are inspired by Cornelia’s actions, words, and the way she lived her life in service to God. The theme for the 175th anniversary year has been ‘Love and Serve,’ which I find so fitting for the mission and charism of our school. Cornelia lived through many tragedies in her own life with resilience and faith and trust in God. Let us leave today inspired to use our lives in service to God and one another. We hope that Cornelia’s legacy is something that each of our students take with them well beyond our campus of Bradley Boulevard.”
She said students could go to the school’s garden and receive a special keepsake, a small Cornelia Connelly medallion that they could attach to their backpacks.
Suzi Montes de Oca, a 1974 graduate of Connelly School of the Holy Child who serves as its director of development and alumnae relations, said the teachers there reflect the vision and mission that Cornelia Connelly established for the religious order’s schools.
“They get to know who these students are and what their passion is, and (help them) to build on that passion,” she said. “God has given each girl different gifts, whether it’s being a math whiz, an artist or an athlete, our teachers bring those special gifts out and help girls find those gifts and build on those gifts.”
Montes de Oca, who also helped bring up the offertory gifts at the Mass, added, “Cornelia Connelly’s mission was always to love one another and to live a life of service. We live that life of service and joy of learning every day.”
