History in Colour: Pretoria’s First Presbytery 1880

by Admin · February 10, 2022

A snapshot from the past, colourised exclusively for The Southern Cross

British soldiers at Pretoria’s first presbytery during the First Anglo-Boer War in 1880-81, situated where Loreto Convent in Skinner Street is today.

In 1877, Bishop Charles Jolivet OMI of the vicariate of Natal came to Pretoria to establish the Catholic Church there, taking advantage of Britain’s annexation of the South African Republic (or Transvaal), which had banned the Catholic Church in its territory.

Bishop Jolivet, a French Oblate who had been appointed to head the Natal vicariate in 1874, celebrated the first Catholic Mass in Pretoria on June 8, 1877, the feast of the Sacred Heart (to which today’s archdiocese of Pretoria is dedicated). On May 17, 1878, the first Loreto Sisters arrived in Pretoria. They included the bishop’s sister, Sr Mary Margaret Jolivet.

During the Boer siege of Pretoria in the 1880-81 war, the convent was converted into a sanctuary for the town’s women and children, while some 600 soldiers were camped on the fortified convent grounds. When a typhoid epidemic claimed Mother Margaret Mary Jolivet, she was given a military funeral and buried in the convent grounds.