No-one who is at all familiar with the Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Conception will need to be convinced that their story is worth telling. In some ways it is unique. Founded in 1847, theirs is the only Congregation in the post-Reformation Catholic Church, male or female, to originate in Scotland. Their lives, grounded in the Gospels and the vision of St Francis, have from the beginning been dedicated to working for others, particularly among the poor and the marginalised.
The present work traces their story, from the slums of Victorian Glasgow to the shanty towns of present-day Africa and among the ‘new poor’ at home. It is a colourful story, but it is more. In many ways it is an exemplar of the fortunes of all religious Congregations, and a microcosm of the Catholic Church itself, over the past century-and-a-half.
Through all their successes and failures - and the author has omitted neither - the abiding impression of the Sisters, indeed their hallmark, is the love that they have given to so many people, selflessly and with great devotion, and the difference for good that they have made to those whose lives they have touched.
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