Well done, girls.
I am so thrilled for each of you today. This is a milestone day, and one I hope you allow yourselves simply to enjoy – to sit back, to feel it, to be present in it. I hope the overriding feeling for you this morning is gratitude.
Your families, sitting with us today, are feeling that gratitude too. They are remembering the girl who first walked through our gates, her childhood, her challenges, her achievements, her laughter. They are so very proud of you. This is a day for our Brigidine families to be together, to celebrate. And we remember, with love, those family members who cannot be with us today.
Your teachers share these sentiments entirely, and I want to add my own thanks, on behalf of this whole community: your fellow students, your teachers, your families, and the many alumni whose ranks you now join. Thank you for what you have given Brigidine College St Ives across your years here.
I want to speak personally for a moment. You are the first Year 12 cohort of my time as Principal.
When I arrived at the start of this year, still finding my way around our corridors and our community, it was you – the girls of Class of 2026 – who made me feel so genuinely welcome. Your warmth toward a new Principal, your openness, your willingness to let me in, is something I will carry with me always. You will forever be my first graduating class, and that is a gift I did not expect and will never forget.
The culture of a school is set by its Year 12s – by their leadership, and by the small, everyday things they do that show the values and spirit of a school. This year, you have been the guardians of our Brigidine mission, and you have worn that responsibility beautifully.
If I had to choose the single thread that has run through your year, it is the one you chose for yourselves: sisterhood sticks. It has not just been a slogan or a banner. I have watched you live it. I have watched you turn toward each other rather than away – in the classroom, on the sporting field, backstage before a performance, in the quiet moments when someone needed a friend rather than an audience. You have cultivated something rare: a genuine sense of belonging, not only for yourselves, but for the younger girls watching you, learning from you, wanting to be you. That is leadership in its truest, most Brigidine sense – strength offered gently, Fortiter et Suaviter, and it is your legacy to this College.
I have loved getting to know you properly at our Principal’s lunches this year – hearing you talk, unprompted, about your friendships, your teachers, your families, and what this place has meant to you. I saw the same spirit on your Year 12 Retreat, in the way you cared for one another away from the busyness of school life. I saw it in Spirit Week, in your joy and your willingness to be a little silly, a little loud, and entirely yourselves, and in doing so, inviting every other girl in this College into that joy with you.
And I have been so impressed – genuinely – by how fully you have shown up in every part of this College’s life. Academically, persisting and supporting one another right to the end. On the sporting field, in the dance studio, on the drama stage – wherever there was a chance to contribute, you took it, and you took each other along with you. That breadth, that willingness to say yes to the whole of school life, is part of what I mean when I say you have shown us belonging in action.
Last year, as our Church farewelled Pope Francis, our community sat inside what he called a Jubilee Year of Hope. In his final writing, his autobiography titled simply Hope, Pope Francis opened with a line from the poet Rilke: that “the future enters into us and transforms itself long before it actually happens.” Our own experiences change us, quietly, before we ever notice. That belief – that what we live through together shapes who we become – sits at the very heart of what you have done for one another and for this College this year.
Pope Francis also wrote that hope always grows in him when he meets young people. I understand exactly what he meant. When I look at the Class of 2026, I see hope for the future – for the friendships you will keep, for the kindness you will carry into rooms far beyond these gates, for the sisterhood you have shown does not need to end with a graduation gown.
A world that is fragile needs to be nurtured. A world that is uncertain needs the kind of compassionate leadership you have already shown us. Girls of the Class of 2026: go from this place carrying your sisterhood with you, wherever you go next.
You are, truly, our hope for the future.
Mrs Kate Quinane
Principal
