70 years of the Jesuit Mission Bazaar and Maytime Fair
It took “all kinds of stuff” – including 360 dozen lamingtons – to build the fledgling Jesuit mission after the first Australian missionaries set off for Hazaribag in 1951, 70 years ago. For back home in Australia, a small band of supporters was gathering all the resources they could to raise money for the mission. One of them, Mary Brabenec, was just three years old when her mother Jeanette Connellan held the first ever fundraising function, in Melbourne.
The fair is now a beloved institution which Mary and her entire family have been involved with for the past 70 years. She recalls a sign made one year by a Xavier College art teacher for the trash and treasure stall.
Mary, who had visited India in 1972, returned early last year. The progress made in the intervening years was self-evident, she says.
In Sydney, 82-year-old Maureen Punch, recalls being asked as a teenager to run a stall at the Jesuit Mission Bazaar. She was president at the time of the Riverview Younger Set.
Years later, when her three sons were enrolled at St Ignatius’ College Riverview, she was asked to run the cake stall.
After her children had left school, Maureen started selling second-hand clothing at the Bazaar and at a monthly market in Sydney.
Pamplona poem by Fr Andy Bullen SJ
The Ignatian Year celebrates the 500th anniversary of St Ignatius’ cannonball wound at the battle of Pamplona and his subsequent conversion to commit himself to God’s work. In addition, the 31 July is the feast day of St Ignatius and we invite you to reflect on Fr Andy Bullen's SJ poem Pamplona.
Click here to read Pamplona.
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