20th January 2012

is a significant day for the congregation for three reasons :

1. It is 170 years to the day since Alphonse Ratisbonne had his conversion experience in the Church of St Andrea Della Fratte in Rome. This miraculous event, on 20th January, 1842, inspired his brother, Theodore Ratisbonne, to found the congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Sion. More Information

2. It is 150 years since our school, Our Lady of Sion School, Worthing, was founded by Theodore Ratisbonne. Over the years hundreds of students have not only received a very good education, but have also absorbed much of the Sion ethos which permeates the school - attitudes of respect, welcome of other traditions and faiths, and considerate to all. Our congratulations to all at Sion School, Worthing

3. 20th January 2012 will the 70th anniversary of the Wansee Conference - January 20th 1942. This was the conference, held exactly one hundred years after the founding event of our congregation, in which 15 Nazi officials assembled at a lakeside villa on the Wansee near Berlin to deliberate on the “final solution.” This month, the world marks the 70th anniversary of the Wansee Conference, one of the pivotal moments in Holocaust history.

In our present day, we rejoice that the Church has a new and much more positive understanding towards its relationship with Jewish people and other faiths than it used to.

However, there is still anti semitism, prejudice, discrimination and injustice in our world. There is sill an urgent need for the work of reconciliation, healing, peace and justice done by the Sisters of Sion and our friends.

'The older I get, the more convinced that the work of Sion is a reality of the present moment' (Theodore Ratisbnne)