Puget Organ KRB

A Visit to Rue de Varenne, Paris
Chapel Society member, Thérèse Burnett, and I were in Paris in September, 2008 and we visited the former Sacré Cœur Convent School, now the Rodin Museum. We walked through the grounds and thought of all the activity that took place there from 1820 when St. Madeleine Sophie bought the property (the Hôtel Biron) until its forced closure in 1904 under such sad circumstances for Rev. Mother Mabel Digby who arranged for the chapel stalls and pulpit and the Bordeaux organ to be sent to Sydney.

We also visited the Parish Church of St. François Xavier where the Châsse of St Madeleine Sophie Barat will be transferred from Belgium on the Feast of the Sacred Heart in 2009. St François Xavier Church – to be the final resting place of the Châsse of St Madeleine Sophie Barat from 2009.
Check: St François-Xavier Church in Paris and more on the AMASC website at:
http://www.amasc-sacrecoeur.org/rscj/rscj_Chasse.html

Later I had a private visit to the Lycée Victor Duruy (Government High School) which had been the Sacré Coeur Mother House and Junior Day School erected in 1859 on the vast grounds of the Boarding School. This dignified building contained its own large chapel which is now partly classrooms and partly library, and with its beautifully decorated ceiling is still named “Salle de la Chapelle”. From its windows the Rodin Museum can be seen through the trees, and from both the Museum and the Lycée, the towers of the Parish Church are visible, so it will be a most fitting return for the Saint to rest just across the road from the site of the Paris School she founded and where she died.

Photo of the ceiling of the Chapel of the Mother House now part of the Lycée – this is in the collage of photographs in the Hughes Centre foyer and on our website at
http://www.puget-organ-restoration.org.au/photos/collage.pdf.

Note this is NOT the Chapel where the Stalls in the KRB Chapel were situated. Those came from the Boarders’ Chapel on the site which is now the entrance to the Rodin Museum in the rue de Varenne –
Photo of newly designed entrance to the Rodin Museum which contains part of the former Boarders’ Chapel where the stalls came from – the twin hearts are still in the rondels of the side windows.
Terrace at the rear of the Lycée overlooking the gardens. This was the former Mother House of The Society built by St Madeleine Sophie in 1859 and where she died in 1865.