Brazil

Foundation of the Community at Guaramirim Santa Catarina

This first community of sisters was located inside the Santo Antonio Hospital, a municipal hospital, which underwent a major transformation during the four years that the Marist Sisters were there.  When the Sisters had finished preparing the team of nurses for standard work and had set up the X-ray centre, they left the hospital, closing the religious community there for good, because new communities had already been opened and some of the sisters who had started together in Guaramirim were already on other mission frontiers.

The beginning of the community in Guaramirim occurred with the arrival of the first five sisters: Bernadette Healy, Irish, a nurse specialising in natural childbirth. Grace Ellul, born in Australia, teacher and psychologist, Imelda Layden, born in Ireland, physiotherapist, Mary Duffy also Irish and a nurse, and Violette Marie Donatta Cyr, born in Canada, a teacher by profession, on 13 May 1978. The promise of the General Administration of the Marist Sisters was, according to Grace Ellul, to send eight sisters to Brazil

During the first months of 1980 the other sisters arrived. Kathleen Gilligan, originally from Ireland and a nurse, Gemma F. Wilson, a New Zealander, teacher and musician, and Antonia Onali, an Italian, also a teacher.

To read more about the beginnings in Brazil …