A NUN has followed in the footsteps of The Bar Convent’s founder by crossing the Alps on foot.

Mary Ward helped to form The Bar Convent, in Blossom Street, during the 17th Century and was a progressive reformer who believed women were capable of great things.

Her journeys across the Alps from Flanders to Rome were made to present plans for her institute personally to the Pope.

The 1,500-mile trek has now been re-created by one of the convent’s newest members, Sister Theo Hawksley, who has blogged about her experience on the trail.

She said: “We know that Mary Ward and her companions made the crossing over the Alps four times, always in winter.

“On the first of these journeys, in 1621, Mary Ward was just 36. She was walking to Rome to ask the Pope to give his approval for the new way of life she had begun with her companions.

“In those days, if you wanted to be a nun you had to be ‘enclosed’, which meant a secluded life of prayer inside a monastery. Mary Ward and her companions wanted something different: an active life of serving God in the world."

Sister Theo spent two weeks in July retracing Mary Ward’s steps from Feldkirch in Austria, where she spent Christmas Eve in 1626, to Innsbruck, where she arrived on January 4 a few days later.

Sister Theo added: “As we crossed the highest point of the route, at just over 1800m, we could see snow and glaciers on the surrounding peaks, and we imagined Mary Ward making this journey in the depths of winter.

“In each village where we stopped for the night, we noticed buildings that would have been there in Mary Ward’s time.

“The pilgrimage brought me close to Mary Ward in a new way, and gave me new respect for her determination and resilience, and new gratitude for the hope that led her to cross the Alps and found new communities in Munich and Vienna, which endure to this day.”

If you’re interested in learning more about Mary Ward, and even seeing some replicas of the hat and shoes she wore on her Alpine crossing, the Bar Convent Exhibition is open six days a week.

Sister Theo’s blog is at thebarconvent.wordpress.com/2017/09/05/in-the-footsteps-of-mary-ward/