What A Life! Mother Cornelia Will Remain in England

The secularised sisters of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus withdrew plans to relocate the remains of their foundress, Venerable Mother Cornelia Connelly (+1879) from Mayfield School, Sussex, England, to the cathedral in Philadelphia, USA, where she was born.
An association of former pupils had opposed her exhumation calling it “virtually obsolete,” “seldom practised in the modern Church,” and a “distasteful medieval custom.”
Cornelia was born a Protestant and married the Episcopal parson Pierce Connelly. After a wave of anti-Catholic pogroms in the US due to Catholic immigration the Connellys became interested in the Faith.
They went to Rome. Pierce met Gregory XVI, petitioned so compellingly for admittance to the Church that Gregory was moved to tears.
In summer 1839 their fourth child died six weeks after birth. In 1840, their two-year-old son died after an accident. The same year, Pierce told Cornelia he wanted to become a priest. Cornelia was pregnant of her fifth child Frank. …More