Film pays tribute to city's big sisters
American nuns who spent decades helping Hongkongers are celebrated in documentary by alumnus of their Maryknoll Convent School
A documentary on a group of American nuns who have contributed to changing the world - and Hong Kong - for more than a century will screen today.
The hour-long film, Trailblazers in Habits, features a series of personal accounts from the Maryknoll Sisters, who have dedicated their lives to humanitarian work in the city since they arrived here decades ago.
Sister Jeanne Houlihan, the former principal of Maryknoll Convent School, said she hoped audiences would be inspired by the message behind the film.
"The sisters would not think of awards and honours; this is not our purpose," she said. "Our purpose is to serve."
And this willingness to serve was just what motivated the founding of the organisation in 1912. Since then, the group has fought for social justice and provided humanitarian services to people from all around the world.
In Hong Kong, the Maryknoll Sisters built homes for refugees, hospitals for the sick, and schools for the young. In 1925, they set up the Maryknoll Convent School in Kowloon Tong.
Houlihan, who came to the city in 1955, recalled the former colony being flooded with refugees from the communist revolution on the mainland. Many lived in wooden houses that were a constant fire hazard.