Throughout this school year, we will feature guest bloggers to share different perspectives on or experiences with Sacred Heart education on our Head of School blog. Our next guest blogger is Sr. Sharon Karam, RSCJ. 

Most visitors to the famous Spanish steps in Rome have no idea what treasure is hiding in the building at the top of the stairs in the imposing 16th century Trinita dei Monti structure.  But faculty and students and former students of the Sacred Heart do!  The building actually belongs to the French government, but for over one hundred years, the Society of the Sacred Heart ran the school there, and in 1844, a young sister, Pauline Perdrau asked her superior if she could paint a picture of Our Lady in fresco style directly on the wall. Perdrau was a fledgling art student and painter, and wanted to depict Mary with a contemplative gaze, and as the young woman she would have been in the scriptural account. She also wanted her to look like the students in the school, and in pink, not the traditional blue of most Marian paintings. She included a lily, symbol of Mary’s purity of heart; a distaff with her knitting, and a book depicting her studies, and gave her the original title of “Madonna of the Lily.”  When she finished the fresco, and showed it to the community, instead of the pink she intended, the color was more like a garish orange, so the superior suggested they cover it up with a wall hanging. Understandably, Pauline was disappointed. However, over time, the paint dried and the hues softened into the beautiful pink and the exact inner gaze she intended in her Madonna – but this was only discovered one day, much later, when Pope Pius IX came by to visit the Trinita and inquired what was behind the curtain.  The superior explained, but he insisted on seeing it.  Viewing the lovely Mater we all now know, he exclaimed, “ah, Mater Admirabilis,” and she has ever since been known by this title, and what was then a corridor became a chapel in her honor, with a steady stream of visitors since 1846. 

But even if you know some of that ‘origin story’,  perhaps you don’t know that Mater has been replicated in many creative forms in Sacred Heart schools throughout the world, and some early paintings moved from one place to another, when a school was closed; for example, a painting in a relatively new school in Uganda came from a school in California, and a statue formerly at Barat College in Illinois was moved to Duchesne Academy in Houston.  

Even more exciting are the forms that devotion to Mater has taken through the years, artistically and otherwise.  In New Orleans, the senior class chooses a senior who most resembles Mater in her daily life and ethical code, and this choice is revealed during the Mater liturgy when the senior, dressed as Mater, is revealed solemnly, but to the joy of all her classmates. At Grand Coteau, the statue of Mater is crowned with the seniors’ class rings in a beautiful ring of ribbons and flowers. And in many schools, petitions and thank you notes are dropped into Mater’s lap in a year-long conversation.

The foundress herself showed admiration for Pauline Perdrau’s painting:  “On my way to the tribune, I often take a turn to go look at her. She attracts me because she is the age of our students and speaks to me of the young people to whom I have vowed my life.”  [St. Madeleine Sophie Barat to Pauline Perdrau, Quoted in Leisure Hours at Layrac Abbey]

Bio: Sr. Karam has vast knowledge and experience both in the classroom and as an educational administrator having served in six different Sacred Heart Network schools throughout her career. She previously served on the RSCJ Provincial Team and on the Network of Sacred Heart Schools Formation to Mission Committee. Sr. Karam previously served four terms on the Regis Board of Directors.