History
Our Founder
Researched by Dr. Patrick Burrowes
St. Teresa's Convent | St. Patrick's School
John M. Collins was born at Gallows Hill, Leap, Co Cork, Ireland, on 21 August
1889, the eighth child of a family of ten. Five of the ten were to enter
religion. John was educated in the colleges of the Society in Ireland. He
studied at St. Joseph's college, Wilton, Cork (1904-1909), after which he
joined the first class to enter the new seminary founded at Blackrock Road,
Cork, in September 1909. John was ordained a priest on 15 June 1913.
On 15 October 1913, Collins set sail for Liberia, where he was to spend
47 years. He was appointed to head the Catholic Church in Liberia in February
1932, and two years later was ordained bishop of Thalensis. John chose for
his motto ‘In Justitia et Pace'.
Two of his signal achievements were the introduction of the Franciscan
Missionaries of Mary in 1937, and the creation of St. Patrick’s High in 1949.
During the course of his life John had been made a Knight Grand Commander of
the Order of Pioneers of the Republic of Liberia.
In 1960, Collin offered his resignation as the Vatican’s representative to
Liberia due to deteriorating health, but he agreed to remain on as apostolic
administrator until a successor was appointed. Collins died March 3, 1961,
before the appointment was made. He received a state funeral, during which a
salute of 17 guns was fired. The President delivered the funeral oration.
Bishop Collins is buried near the Grotto of St. Theresa's convent, Monrovia,
Liberia.
Clad in his vestments, Father John Collins -- who was then heading the
Catholic Church in Liberia -- read Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, followed by
the singing of the Veni Creator, then prayers from the Roman Missal. The
government was fully represented, showing how significant it regarded this
event.
Although President C. D. B. King did not attend (because he was on an official
visit abroad, his full cabinet was present. Thus was launched the school known
as St. Teresa's Convent on April 4, 1937, under the care of six Franciscan
Missionaries of Mary sisters from Rhode Island. Following the ceremony, Bishop
Collins made his way to the Supreme Court, where he was received by the Chief
Justice and all his associates.
The Convent originally consisted of a boarding and day school for girls in
Monrovia which later, in the mid-forties, developed into a fully-fledged high
school, St Theresa's. Fund-raising expeditions to the U.S.A. in 1934 and 1936
provided Collins with the means to build a convent for the sisters.
During the course of his life John had been made a Knight Grand Commander of
the Order of Pioneers of the Republic of Liberia. The launching of Convent was
but one prong of a multi-part effort to implant Catholicism in Liberia: Two
years later, St. Patrick’s Elementary School for boys began, staffed by
priests from Ireland with Father Collins (1889-3 March 1961) as principal. Two
years later, St. Patrick’s High School was inaugurated. The two boys’ schools
were operated by the Society of African Missions and housed in a former
mission house on Ashmun Street (where Cathedral School now stands).
St. Patrick’s sat atop Snapper Hill, the highest precipice in Monrovia. Its
location simultaneously embodied the worst and best of Liberia’s capital, then
a sleepy seaport with a population of 12,000 souls.
The boulders edging the campus and the rock-strewn playground underscored a
hard-scrapple beginning. Yet, this site afforded a spectacular panorama –
zinc, thatched and concrete roofs toward the south, a sand-covered, largely
uninhabited peninsula jutting westward (which would later become the slum
known as West Point) and breathtaking north-side sunsets over the Atlantic
Ocean.
The school’s hilltop neighborhood exuded elegance and energy. Two blocks away
stood the private residence of the president of the Republic, Edwin J.
Barclay. Immediately across the street sat a nerve center of diplomatic
intrigue and economic bustle – the former French Legation that now housed the
trans-oceanic telegraph company with its regular traffic of dignitaries and
merchants. To the north stood a lighthouse, its rhythmic sweep of nighttime
illumination providing an incalculably important service during an era before
air travel became routine.
A trip to the U.S.A. in 1950 and a vigorous fund-raising campaign in Ireland
enabled him to build St. Patrick's high school (opened in 1954), a new convent
for the sisters, and new modern buildings for St. Theresa's. During the early
years of the high school, the principal, Father Francis Carroll, focused on
preparing a small group of students for the Junior Cambridge Local
Examination. A native of Newry, Northern Ireland, Carroll was ordained on
December 20, 1936, at age 22. A few months later, he arrived in Liberia. The
school so quickly distinguished itself that in 1947 President W. V. S. Tubman
awarded to its principal the Star of Africa –one of the highest distinctions
given by the Liberian government. One year later, Catholic schools in Liberia
began receiving government funding for the first time.
By 1949, blueprints for a separate two-story high school building had been
prepared and a new site secured in a suburb of Monrovia called Sinkor. This
new location was prestigious – lying next to Liberia College, the country’s
premier institution of higher education, but, being on the outskirts of the
town, it would prove challenging for commuting students, especially for those
whose parents did not own private cars.
St. Teresa's School Ode |
St. Patrick's School Ode