On Saturday, June 24, Archbishop Peter Loy Chong launched the golden jubilee of the amalgamation, and celebrated St John’s feast day, with former students of St John’s College at the Immaculate Conception Parish in Lami.
The main golden jubilee celebrations will take place at Cawaci, Ovalau, in October this year.
The school we know today as St John’s College, in Cawaci, Ovalau was opened by the Marist Fathers in 1952.
It sits on a site with a special place in the story of Catholic education in Fiji.
The land which covers 525 acres, was first bought by the Catholic Mission in 1890.
The first school was set up at Cawaci, Ovalau, 130 years ago. In 1893 the Marist Fathers moved to Cawaci with trainee catechists from Loreto and the catechists’ school was set up.
The following year the Marist Brothers established St John’s school at Nasarete — a hill behind the site of the current school — in 1894.
Originally set up to educate sons of Fijian chiefs, the school soon accepted young men from the different catholic missions, villages, and island around the group.
In 1897 the Marist Sisters arrived and opened Sol,a the girl’s school, at which the wives and daughters of the catechists were taught.
A carpentry school and a minor seminary — equivalent to secondary school — was also set up by the Marist Fathers, and some students were sent to Rome and New Zealand for further studies.
The brothers also set up St Bede’s, a teacher training school, in 1920.
Cawaci ran as a Marist education village with all six schools, administered by the different orders, running alongside each other around the rara.
It remained this way until the 1940 when the schools started closing and relocating to other areas in Fiji.
The catechists’ school was closed and reopened in Navesi in the 1970s. The Marist Sisters moved back to Marist Convent, and later to Loreto to start Loreto Girls’ High school in 1955.
The Marist Fathers moved the minor seminary to Namosau, where Xavier College stands today.
The Marist Brothers returned to Suva St, where they started a secondary school for boys before they moved to Flagstaff in 1948 and started Marist Brothers’ High School.
St Bedes, the teacher training school, closed and Corpus Christi Teachers College opened in 1958 at Suva Point. In 1952 the priests returned to Cawaci and started St John’s College for boys.
The sisters returned in 1973, closing Loreto and amalgamating it with the all-boys’ Cawaci to be what we all know today as St John’s College.
