Tom Hiney, a priest-writer, describes her as “without doubt one of the most influential British Catholics of the modern era.” Interestingly, this highly influential British Catholic spent most of her long life in Kolkotta, India. Her name is Sr. Mary Frederick, M.C. But Mary Frederick is not her original name. She was baptized Helen Gladys Douglas. Her father, Frederick Douglas, was a government clerk in London and moved to Malta to serve the British Army during the First World War and, except for a few years, lived in Malta all his life.
Helen studied in a school, run by the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Apparition, where catechism was given a lot of importance. Hiney describes what happened one day, when she was around ten years old. She was swimming near their beach house, with Doris, her elder sister, watching from the beach. Helen got her foot caught in something and her head began to disappear under the water and Doris froze in panic. Helen, realizing that she was probably going to die, remembered what she had been taught by the Sisters and made an act of contrition. The next minute she felt like someone pushing her out of the water. Her foot came loose and she swam to shore.
FR M A JOE ANTONY SJ
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