Sr. Ann Stafford CJ has lived in The Bar Convent, York for the past 18 years. She first met members of the Congregation of Jesus when she was 6 months old; two of her aunts were CJ Sisters. Having been brought up in Ireland she joined the Congregation 60 years ago. Her ministries have been in CJ schools in Ascot and Shaftesbury. Sr. Ann has been a community leader in Shaftesbury, Hampstead and York. With wide ministries in York, especially hospitality, Sr. Ann meets people from all over the world. The Bar Convent is the oldest post-reformation Convent in England where the foundress Frances Bedingfield joined Ven. Mary Ward’s new foundation when she was 16 years old. Sr. Ann enjoys living with the unique history of The Bar Convent and sharing the stories with the many visitors.

Dr. Hannah Thomas first encountered Mary Ward during her PhD research on the Welsh Catholic community. Her work involved extensive study of the families of Mary Poyntz and Winefrid Wigmore, which led her to explore Mary Ward’s life and legacy more deeply.

She later returned to the Bar Convent archives as a researcher while writing a book on the Catholic cemetery of the English Canonesses of the Holy Sepulchre and the seventeenth-century sisters of that order who had once lived in Mary Ward’s house in Liège.

Dr. Thomas is the author of The Secret Cemetery: A Guide to the Burial Ground of the English Canonesses of the Holy Sepulchre (2017) and co-editor, with James Kelly, of Jesuit Intellectual and Physical Exchange between England and Mainland Europe (2018). She has also published several articles on Jesuit book history and contributed a historiographical survey of the Jesuit English Province to Jesuit Historiography Online.

Since 2017, Dr. Thomas has served as Special Collections Manager at the Bar Convent in York. In this role, she oversees a wide range of responsibilities, including the care and preservation of Mary Ward’s legacy in England in all its many forms.