Sr Geraldine inspired staff and senior pupils on Friday in a challenging and impassioned speech.

Describing her eight years in the Dominican College Community in Portstewart, Sr Geraldine recalled “a vibrant place” of 300 to 370 students. Sr Geraldine spoke of her deep affection for the school and its ethos within the Dominican Mission statement to “study, share proclaim and witness the liberating words of God”. Describing her own departure from the school in 1983 as “One of those challenges and invitations life offers us”, Sr Geraldine communicated to students her own bond with the school and her profound sense of respect and appreciation of how it had both helped to shape her own thinking and how the school continues to shape the lives of present day students.


At the time of her departure in 1983 the school had undergone many of the educational changes that characterise the school today. By 1983 the school had become co-educational and was a place of genuine ethnic, cultural and religious diversity.

Sr Geraldine recalled the high number of creative students in the fields of sport, Drama, Music and Art and expressed her delight at how these trends had continued without any loss of community. Looking at the present day strengths of the school Sr Geraldine argued that it bore testimony to her own belief, grounded in her own studies and teaching, that diversity did not lead to division. Drawing on the challenge described in Luke’s gospel as “setting at liberty those who are oppressed” , Sr Geraldine spoke of the “liberating” power of education and the importance of the school’s “sense of solidarity and social concern with the wider society” and inspired students to continue to “hunger and thirst for Justice.

Turning to her role as head of Boarders, Sr Geraldine described a life often lived “against the grain”, often being seen by the boarders as an authoritarian figure. Reflecting on the dark and disturbing political situation of the late 70s and 80s she spoke of the secure environment the Boarding school offered to students with its “special blend of normality”. Sr Geraldine spoke about how her own work in peace and reconciliation was not about trying to homogenise everyone, rather about “respecting and understanding how people live in different cultures, believing in the importance of dialogue .. about building bridges between the sacred and the secular”, or as the Ulster Poet John Hewitt described it , “the bond and break between us”.


Speaking to Dominican senior students on the day when world leaders were involved in last ditch attempts to create some sense of solidarity at the Copenhagen summit, Sr Geraldine concluded her speech with the African belief that the world is not ours but is rather on loan in our guardianship from our children and our children’s children. She inspired pupils to build on the sense of energy and vitality they had been instilled with in school and to “take up the challenges in fresh fields, in pastures new”. She urged students to recognise their achievements , endeavours and successes in “reaching out to others and challenged them to seek careers where they could both think boldly and be at home with their identity in helping to shape the world around them”.