The General Council in 1974 : Mary Catherine McKay (USA), Maria Luiza Saade (Brasil), Concha Camacho (Superior General), Doreen Boland (Uganda-Kenya, Françoise Cassiers (Belgium)

Françoise in Miami

If my life were a book, I would call it “Love where the Rivers Meet”. I have often had the sensation of being at the meeting-point between two divergent, sometimes contradictory, realities: an uncomfortable place to be, but Love has always been with me.

I was born in Brussels, the first of seven children, at the precise geographical junction – or rather separation – between the city’s most elegant neighbourhood and its poorest.

It was a time of prosperity for the country, but would soon be followed by four years of war and of armed occupation, with all the privations and violence that followed in their wake, but also courage and generosity. (My parents hid resistance fighters, and we knew that betrayal would mean death.) All these factors formed the background of my childhood, and probably gave me a very early sense of responsibility towards a world in which beauty and horror, selfishness and solidarity were so closely entwined.

One night when I was very small, the splendour of a starry sky gave me such a strong sense of God’s presence that I knew my life belonged to Him. This awareness developed into a close personal relationship with Jesus, right from the time of my First Communion, for which I was very well prepared by Mother Dessain, who was young then, and an excellent educator. (When my mother, a woman of deep faith, told me that ‘I had made such a short thanksgiving’, I said to myself, ‘What does that matter? Jesus is with me all the time.’) This experience at the age of 6 remained fundamental, giving a confident, positive note to my always anxious and demanding nature. So I was happy when I went to school at the Sacred Heart, and made true friends, who are still my friends today. At 10, on my confirmation day (for which I was also prepared by Mother Dessain), the Holy Spirit became a ‘person’ who spoke to me directly. This new experience gave me strength and joy countless times in the sometimes bleak adolescent years that followed.

At 17, going to University marked a new, exciting stage: two years of intellectual and affective discoveries. The male friendships I began at this time are still deep today. And so the prospect of religious life confined exclusively to women made me shudder… In spite of which, after a heart-wrenching inner struggle, I entered the noviceship – ‘a little too soon’, according to Mother Dessain, and I agree – but it was straight away or not at all…

My impression of the noviceship (1954-55), which was then very enclosed in every sense of the word, was one of suffocation, yet at the same time it was a unique opportunity for a life in which prayer became essential. We had to follow the advice of St Francis of Sales: “Daughter, be like the halcyon birds: they skim over the waves, but the air they breathe comes only from above”. Sister Napier, the Mistress of Novices, with her discretion and British humour, helped me a great deal. Her own task was no easy one, in those pre-Conciliar years when changes were in the air but could not be put into practice: the Belgian Church was going ahead faster tan Rome or our Chapters.

The years of teaching that followed, at Jette and above all at Lindthout, were happy; I loved the students, and with the teachers we formed a close-knit, dynamic team. By the time the Council came to open doors and windows, I had finished my University studies with professors who had taken an active part in it, and were interested in liberation theology. (At Louvain at that time, there were many students from South America, e.g. Camilo Torres, whose photo could be seen all over the place.) It was a big breath of fresh air! But it was not so easy to apply that spirit to our religious and community life; those who embarked on that road had to be prepared for stiff opposition.

Then came the period of the General Chapters which brought about such profound changes. I was sent as a delegate to the Chapters of 1967 and 1970, and when I found so many open and courageous Sisters there, in the midst of all the upheaval, I felt renewed confidence that the Society could live as boldly today as Madeleine Sophie did at the beginning. Meeting Concha Camacho, and living with her for three years, was a grace that gave me a new outlook on how things really were, in personal and community life, and in the world. The discovery of so many different cultures, through visits to Central Europe, revived what I had felt as a child: that injustice is everywhere in the world, but that the important thing is how we react to it. I had asked to be sent to a Third World country, so it was another grace for me to belong for 4 years to the Egyptian Province. I don’t think I was much use, owing to my poor health, but the Egyptians were very sensitive and generous-hearted, especially those in the most isolated villages, and the women who lived in the harshest conditions. They deeply touched and transformed me. When I had to return to Belgium on account of my health, these were ‘the poor’ who made it so easy for me to make friends with the immigrant world in Brussels. Teaching religion both in our school at Jette, where the students were mostly Belgian and middle-class, and in a poorer school where Moroccan Muslim girls were side by side with Greek Orthodox or Portuguese Catholics, gave me a great opportunity to build bridges between such different milieux; the students from Jette even organised a whole fête in the grounds of the other school! And from all this cultural mix a prayer-group was also formed; a few years later it gave us our first Belgian novice after 17 lean years … (today she is serving in our communities in Chad!)

As this little account does not intend to anticipate my death-notice, I shall pass over the years that followed. They have kept me, one way or another, at this meeting-point between such amazing differences of culture, social background and age. At present I’m living with the elderly Sisters of our Province; we are surrounded by other people who are even older, terribly lonely, often wounded by an existence that doesn’t have much meaning for them. It’s a challenge; deep down, it’s also a joy, because of that mysterious Presence perceptible in the hearts of the most downtrodden, with the strength of a Love that knows no frontiers…