Page 156 - March On! God will Provide by Brother Aubert

BISHOP SPALDING IN BRUGES I35
to the departure of Doctor Turner. After almost three
years in the basement of the church, the Brothers re-
ceived orders to move themselves and their charges to
St. Aloysius School about a mile and a half away.- This
was the property of the mother-church.
At the same time the Sisters, the Faithful Companions
of Jesus, who had held classes in the same d.ani d.ark-
ness as the Brothers, came up out of the catacombs and
moved to Grosvenor Street. previously they had limited
their activities to night-school and Sund.ay School but
now they planned to open a day-school. Both communi-
ties had moved out of the shadows into the thick of
-rhi"Sr: Grosvenor Street with its half-moon of plain
brick houses, very business-like in all lack of orna?nen-
tation, was_ separated from Oxford Street, a main high-
rvay, by only a tiny plot of grass.
Sometime that December, since the middle-school was
scheduled to open in January, l8b3, Mr. Ryken named
Brother Paul Van Gerwen as tlle Superior-of the com_
munity. To take care of both St. Aloysius and. the pro-
posed new foundation there were the experienced Broth-
ers-Ignatius, Stanislaus, and John along with a novice
u"q postulanr. Missing wa$ the pioneer ar both Bury
1
and Manchester, Brother Alexius, who had been re_
called to-Bruges. Four years of constant grind had ex-
hausted him: day-school, night-school, SInday School
which was an all-day afiair, sodalities, May devotions,
first communion classes, and visits to the homes of the
pupils especially those who happened to be absent from
school.
. fn.Brug_es Brother Alexius was for a time among the
inactiv_e. He was only twenty-eight; four of his six "years
as an Xaverian had been spent on the English ..mission.',
With the departure of Brother paul for Manchester, the
newly-returned sick man was seventh in seniority at