‘Loreto’ Origins
The IBVM sisters in the 21st century belong to one of two branches – the Roman branch now called the Companions of Jesus (CJ), and the Loretto branch (IBVM). The latter branch emanated from the Irish foundation established by Mother Teresa Ball (1794-1861). From this foundation convents and schools have been established in India, Mauritius, England, Australia, South Africa, Spain, Kenya, Peru, USA and Canada,
It is unclear how the name Loreto (or Loretto) was chosen by Teresa Ball for her schools, as the following passage describes:
Loreto, Italy
It has never been fully explained why Mother Teresa decided to name her convent Loreto House, or rather, to use her own spelling, Loretto House, an error which remained uncorrected for many years. The town of Loreto in Italy holds a famous relic, an old house which is said to be the house where the Holy Family lived in Nazareth. According to the local tradition, it was carried to Loreto by angels in the year 1295 to protect it from destruction by the Saracens. The Holy House of Loreto became one of the great pilgrimage centres of mediaeval Italy and devotion to Our Lady of Loreto was commended by many popes and saints. The devotion was lttle known, however, in Northern Europe and it is hard to account for Mother Teresa’s choice.
One intriguing fact is the well-documented devotion of Mary Ward to the shrine at Loreto. Travelling on foot from Brussels to Rome in 1621, she made a detour of two hundred and fifty miles to visit the shrine. She spent a full day in prayer in the Holy House and, according to her companion and biographer Winefrid Wigmore, was given foreknowledge of the suffering and rejection she was to meet in Rome.
With unspeakable devotion, faith, and confidence in God, she made her prayer, and took for her part and portion to labour and suffer for Christ, having lively represented to her the much she was to suffer; which was the cause that as soon as she beheld the steeple of St Peter’s Church, sixteen miles off Rome, she knelt down and profoundly inclined, reverencing those sacred relics of the Apostles, and rendered all submission to that Holy Seat and Chair of his successors.
Second Visit
Mary Ward made a second visit to Loreto in 1629, shortly before the suppression of the Institute, in great distress if mind and body. A third visit planned in 1635 had to be abandoned because of a combination of her own ill-health and the harassment of her enemies. She never succeeded in returning.
How much did Mother Teresa know of all this? The available evidence suggests that she knew little about Mary Ward, and that little unfavourable. Was it sheer coincidence, then, that led her to pick such an unlikely name? Or was there some tradition still lingering on in the Institute of York, some remnant of the devotion to Our Lady of Loreto that survived the repudiation of Mary Ward? Whatever the reason, Mother Teresa picked a name for her first house and , unintentionally, for her whole sisterhood that linked them to their earliest and purest roots.
Source: D. Forristal The First Loreto Sister: Mother Teresa Ball 1794-1861 pp 67-8
