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This book tells the stories of women and men of the Aquinas Academy, a centre of adult education in Sydney founded in 1945 by an Australian Marist priest, Austin Woodbury. The book places the personal narratives within the social, cultural and intellectual landscape of Australian Catholicism spanning seven decades. Chapters trace the founding vision of the academy as a Catholic institution of higher education affiliated with Saint Thomas Aquinas's university in Rome, the expansion of programmes of adult spirituality across the eastern Australian states and the growing place of contemplative and mystical prayer in a church rediscovering its spiritual core. Combining archival research and conversations with former students and staff about childhood, war, family and the struggles to make sense of losses and loves, the Aquinas Academy is a story ultimately about adults learning to grow up.

In 1836, the newly created Society of Mary receives from the Holy See the responsibility of evangelizing Oceania. Jean-Claude Colin, freshly elected Superior General, will eventually send 117 missionaries there. These men record what they observe, they keep their logbooks, they say how they are received, they state the difficulties they meet, they record the works they undertake... in short, they write.