Telegram. Photographs after the fire. Thank you poster.

Source: MM, B-MEN.

The Menin house was founded in the Flemish region of Belgium in 1901. The Sisters developed an apostolate in the Flemish language, especially for the working class. They opened a workshop to teach young girls sewing at the same time as catechism. On February 14, 1911, around 5:30 p.m., 40 of them entered the room on the ground floor under the chapel to begin their work when they heard an unusual noise and saw an abnormal light. The chapel was on fire. The community was able to leave the buildings without damage, but at 9 p.m. the house was nothing but a huge inferno. The Sisters did not have time to remove the Blessed Sacrament from the tabernacle. On the other hand, a large number of neighbors managed to remove furniture and objects.

The Superior General in Brussels was immediately notified by telegram: “The Upper Room was completely burned down – no personal accidents”.

The nearby congregations and neighbors, “rich and poor, Catholics and socialists,” offered the community food, furniture and rooms. However, the Saint Regis house, recently built for workers’ pensions, made it possible to rehouse the Sisters. Donations, financial and of all kinds, poured in. To thank the population for its generosity, the Sisters wanted to resume the apostolate as soon as possible. The community occupied the building reserved for the works, so it was necessary to rent a house nearby to continue them.

To thank everyone without forgetting anyone, a poster was made in Flemish and French: “THANKS. The Superior and the nuns of the Cenacle convent are fulfilling a very sweet duty by showing the good people of Menin their feelings of deep gratitude for all the marks of devotion and sympathy they have received on the occasion of the disaster that has struck them”.