The Sisters of the Sacred Heart and the Aurora College for Women in Shanghai: from 1937 to 1951

The founding of the China mission was the topic of serious consideration among the Sisters of the Sacred Heart. From 1926 to 1952, there were 60 missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of 13 nationalities in Shanghai. During this period of time, the Sisters of the Sacred Heart admitted 20 Chinese women into their congregation and the latter had the same status as their foreign counterparts. In 1926, the Sisters of the Sacred Heart opened a foreign school. Later, they established a primary school in 1932, a middle school in 1939, and the Aurora College for Women in 1937—these three institutions catered to Chinese students.

The College was in fact the first and the only singular Catholic institute for tertiary education for women in China. “The need was obvious”, as previously there had been “no Catholic University or College in China open to girls.” It was an American style university-college like other Sacred Heart colleges in the United States. At that time, there were only three Christian colleges for women in China, the other two being Jinling Women’s College (Jinling College or Ginling College) in Nanjing and Women’s College of South China (Huanan College or Hwa Nan College) in Fuzhou.

This paper studies the effort of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart in providing tertial education to Chinese women in Shanghai in almost two decades before they were forced out of China. The keywords are: (1) gender, (2) tertiary education, (3) Shanghai, (4) Catholic Church; and (5) missionaries.