Barat College artifact installed at Woodlands Academy

The words engraved on the plaque next to the stained glass window capture the heart of the image.

"For the sake of one child, I would have founded the Society of the Sacred Heart," it says. Her hand resting gently on the head of a girl, the nun's saintly expression reflects only care and concern for her young charge.

Previously part of the Old Main building at the former Barat College, the St. Madeleine Sophie Barat window has been installed in the library at Woodlands Academy of the Sacred Heart in Lake Forest. Students and staff dedicated the artifact during a ceremony Monday.

"Besides being a beautiful piece of art, this ties us to our past," said Woodlands Head of School Gerald Grossman. "It's a visual representation of the woman who founded our society over 200 hundred years ago."

With a mission to educate girls, Barat, a French nun, founded the Society of the Sacred Heart in 1800. The organization has grown into an international network of schools including the all-girls high school campus in Lake Forest. Barat was declared a saint by Pope Pius X in 1925.

The window was designed by Emil Frie in Munich, Germany in the early 1920s. It was one of three he created for Barat College. The window restoration and installation was paid for by the Barat Education Foundation and given to the high school as a gift, Grossman said.

"This serves as a tangible presence of Barat that our girls have only heard about in the abstract," he said. "Now they have something that they can see and touch."