IBVM Ownership and Oversight
The number of religious in Australia is diminishing overall, particularly in schools, and this is also true for the Loreto sisters.
Since the 1980s, the Loretos have been developing structures to enable the Mary Ward charism to continue into the future. These structures include the establishment of governing bodies for each of the Loreto schools in Australia. On each of these bodies there are two Loreto sisters. The responsibilities of these bodies include:
- the drawing up of legal and financial agreements between each school and the IBVM leadership body
- the setting up of the Loreto Education Board, which administers the work of the seven School Councils
The IBVM sisters exercise a pivotal function in relation to the Catholic nature of Loreto schools. Their elected leader, the Provincial Superior, is the ‘juridical person’, to whom the local Catholic bishop delegates the authority to run a Catholic school, thus connecting Loreto Normanhurst to the wider Catholic Church.
The sisters are further involved in their schools in a range of ways, through committee membership, providing in-service workshops, regular gatherings and conferences, and maintaining friendships and relationships with people in Loreto schools. Although since 2001 there has been no full-time sister on the staff of the Loreto Normanhurst, the influence of the IBVM on the school remains substantial through these other means.
