Sister Jan Ogilvy said they started last night in Mosgiel, but hardly a peep was heard.
The sisters have begun their celebrations with two days of prayer and reflection at Burns Lodge, in Mosgiel, which finish tomorrow afternoon.
"This is how we are starting our celebrations, but we are certainly going to have a big party on Saturday."
"We’ve been looking forward to this for a long time. This is a watershed moment for us.
"We have celebrated Foundresses' Day for a long time, but the 150th seems like a very important time to pause in our lives."
She said the celebration was supposed to have been held in February, but was delayed by Covid-19 alert level changes.
The first 10 sisters arrived in Port Chalmers from Dublin on February 18, 1871, after volunteering to help establish a new diocese and Catholic schools, alongside Bishop Patrick Moran, the first Catholic Bishop appointed to Otago and Southland.
Within two days of their arrival, they took charge of an existing primary school and a week later opened a secondary school for girls — St Dominic’s College, in Dunedin.
In the following years, they established communities and schools in Invercargill, Oamaru, Queenstown, Cromwell, Lawrence, Milton, Bluff, North East Valley and Kaikorai.
By 1887 they had raised funds to build the first wing of St Dominic’s Priory, and in later years they established a School for the Deaf in Island Bay and then Feilding, and schools in Helensville, Northcote, Blockhouse Bay and Henderson.
In 1899, the sisters went on to found a new Dominican congregation in Western Australia.
More recently, they sent three sisters to Vanuatu in 1980, where they worked for 10 years.
Since the 1960s, the sisters have gradually moved away from formal school teaching, handing the responsibility over to dioceses and lay teachers.
Instead, they moved into other work, including rural ministry, opening a retreat and conference centre at Teschemakers, working in chaplaincies at universities, prisons, hospitals and hospices as well as running a course for teachers in Catholic schools.
Today, sisters are not as recognisable because they no longer dress in full-length white woollen habits and black veils.
However, they still live according to the values and traditions of the Dominican Order begun 800 years ago in France by St Dominic.
Rather than being proud of the order’s achievements over the past 150 years, Sr Ogilvy said the sisters were "grateful".
"We couldn’t have done it without the support of the communities in the places we’ve been. We’re grateful for that."
