A HISTORIC event took place in the life of the Assumption Grammar School, Ballynahinch, on the evening of Monday, May 20.
Guests representing the various facets of the school community, including the board of governors, staff, pupils, parents, past pupils, spouses of the Directors of the Trust, Rev Fr Brian Brown, PP, and Canon Gerry McCrory, former chair of the board of governors, gathered with the Assumption Sisters to witness a new and beautiful chapter being opened in the story of Assumption Grammar School.
Sr Anne Patricia Flynn, Congregational Leader of the Missionary Sisters of the Assumption, representing the congregational Trustees, formally and confidently passed to the Assumption School Trust the guardianship and oversight of the school, its ethos and distinctive religious character, as well as the powers and responsibilities which the Assumption Sisters have held.
The Assumption Grammar School, founded by the Missionary Sisters of the Assumption in 1933, has evolved and developed since those early years, still maintaining the essence of that original spirit.
Part of this evolution was the setting up of the Assumption Trustee Group in 2010 to support and collaborate with the Sisters in their trusteeship of the school. Since then the Trustee Group has given sterling and committed service in this capacity.
Now, in 2019, the Missionary Sisters of the Assumption have established the Assumption School Trust, an incorporated company limited by guarantee.
The Assumption School Trust is guided by the charter to further the aims and purposes of Catholic education within the Assumption Grammar School, in the Assumption tradition, as stated in the charter and its companion document, Fully Alive.
The closing lines of the charter express the hope of the Missionary Sisters of the Assumption as they entrust the school to the Assumption School Trust:
“May this charter, lived and reflected upon, be the means whereby the Assumption School Trust carries within itself and passes on the vision of an education which is wholly in the service of enabling God’s love to be experienced and lived in our world. ‘Thy Kingdom Come’.”
The commissioning service took place in the school oratory in an atmosphere of rejoicing and thanksgiving.
Following the service, as the guests enjoyed a celebratory meal in the Millbrook Lodge Hotel, the sense of solidarity, community and enduring common bonds was strong and tangible.