Mary Ward: Catholic Rebel & Leader
Foundress of the Institute of The Blessed Virgin Mary
Mary Ward was seen as such a controversial character that she wasn't officially acknowledged as foundress of her religious order until 250 years after her death.
The Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary is a well-established organisation, with religious houses in countries all around the world. However, in the 17th century, when the Institute was first started, women weren’t encouraged to have any ideas of leadership.
Mary Ward was a remarkable woman who went against convention to found an institute which has lasted almost 400 years. In doing so, she sacrificed her health and was even briefly imprisoned whilst carrying out her charitable works. Her story is a remarkable one and still has the power to inspire today.
The Life of Mary Ward
Mary Ward was controversial because she believed in a type of religious life for women that was different to anything on offer at the time. She wanted religious women to be allowed to join an order which also allowed them to work in the outside world.
She was born in England around 1585, at a time when to be a Catholic was a dangerous thing. Her own family members were staunch Roman Catholics and she was inspired by the example of recent martyrs, such as Margaret Clitheroe, who had lived in nearby York, to search for a religious order which might suit her. When she couldn’t find anything that would allow her to put her faith into practice in the outside world, she came to the conclusion that she would have to create her own religious order.
Creation of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary
In 1609, at the age of 24, Mary gathered a group of like-minded women and began her own religious community in Flanders, which supported itself by teaching and taking boarding pupils. She created a set of rules for the order and stated that her women would live the life of apostles, being active in the community and serving wherever the need was greatest.
This in itself would probably not have put Mary at odds with the Church authorities. It was her decision that women would run the Order that worried many within the Church. Such a decision was very controversial and made people uneasy.
But the disapproval of others didn’t stop this strong-willed woman and she managed to place her Order on an official footing by gaining permission to found religious houses from Pope Gregory XV, and was also given permission to set up schools in the city of Rome.
Despite promising beginnings, Mary’s religious houses and her schools were eventually suppressed by the Pope, mainly because they would not follow the rule of enclosure. And so Mary was forced to return home to England.
Before she could reach her home country, she was imprisoned in 1631 by the Inquisition and accused of being a ‘heretic, rebel, and schismatic of Holy Church’. She corresponded with friends and supporters, urging them to carry on her work and was released later the same year.
Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary in England
By 1637, Mary was back in England, suffering from poor health. For the next few years, she found it difficult to establish a settled religious community, due to the upheaval caused by the English Civil War. Her supporters remained faithful, and she died in January 1645 and was buried in a churchyard at Osbaldwick, outside York.
Like many pioneers, Mary Ward’s work was only truly appreciated after her death. The Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary was recognised by the Roman Catholic Church in 1877. It was not until 1909 that Mary Ward was acknowledged as the founder of the institute and took her place in the history of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Source
Orchard, Gillian, Mary Ward: Once and Future Foundress, Gillian Orchard, 1997, IBVM
