About Us

HISTORY OF MUFFLES COLLEGE

Muffles College is named after Father Joseph Meuffels who was assigned to Orange Walk in May 1900. With the death of his predecessor, Father Josephus Piemonte, in June of the same year, he began his twenty-one year pastorate of the Orange Walk Church. Father Meuffels was highly regarded by his people. He was responsible for the completion of present day La Inmaculada Church.

In response to a need to make secondary education available in the Orange Walk District, the Jesuit Community founded Muffles College in 1953. By 1959, Muffles College had evolved from being a two-year to a four-year co-educational high school. Given a nation-wide shortage of priests, the College came under the leadership of the Sisters of Mercy in 1967, switching to lay leadership ten years later.

Muffles Junior College opened its doors on August 24, 1992 with an enrolment of thirty-eight students pursuing Associate Degrees in Business Science. Twenty-two students made up its first graduating class on June 11, 1994. The junior college dream began to take shape through the combined effort of strong community and Government partnership begun in 1989. Just as the challenge to the need for accessible and affordable secondary education in the 1950s was answered, so too the community again responded to the new challenge to make tertiary education available and affordable in Orange Walk.

2003 Friday the 29th of August : Relocation to new campus at 1.3 Miles San Estevan Road, Orange Walk Town.

2017 Thursday the 24th of August : Muffles Junior College celebrates it’s 25th anniversary.

: The Lion is established as the official school mascot.

THE SISTERS OF MERCY

Catherine McAuley founded the Order of the Sisters of Mercy in 1831. She was a remarkable woman who once walked through the poorest sections of Dublin City, Ireland, and was stunned by what she found there: ignorance, neglect, and disease. Catherine was appalled by the all too visible helpless hunger and hopeless prejudice. The Irish poor had no way out, caught as they were in a bitter struggle of political-religious ideas and ideals that denied them food, freedom, property, and education. Catherine knew there was something she had to do, and so she started an institute of women religious who could bring to those in need the incomparable quality of God’s mercy.

Catherine was a woman of compassion and prayer - socialite turned social worker, lady of fashion who lived among the poor, woman of wealth who had no money, activist who early learned the discipline of sanctity. She began her institute, the Religious Sisters of Mercy, with only seven co-workers. As founder of an Irish religious order, Catherine was thought unlikely to succeed, largely because a religious institute was never really her intent at all. She was approximately fifty years old when the Institute of the Sisters of Mercy was established. She lived only ten years after that uncertain beginning, and she found out very quickly that what she had thought a vast amount of inherited wealth - close to one million dollars in twentieth century currency - was pitifully inadequate for the needs of those who cried out in help. Ireland was in turmoil - bitter, deep, and divided. Dublin was split into religious, economic and socio-political categories unalterably opposed to each other: Catholic - Protestant, poor - rich, underprivileged - influential.

Catherine began to launch the projects she had long envisioned: first to educate and care for the poor, and second, to provide a residence for her and others who might choose to work with her. She arranged to buy property on Baggot Street in Dublin. There she built, not a small house, but one large enough to carry out her plans. It was to be called the House of Mercy. Those who came to join Catherine lived austerely: praying, teaching, and caring for the needy. Visitation of the sick in their homes began in 1828. Perhaps the idea of the first Mercy hospital sprang into existence when Catherine came home carrying a sick and abandoned child.

Around the world today, Sisters of Mercy still teach, still care for the sick, and still use their freedom to respond to new needs in the marketplaces of the twenty-first century. They influence politics and economics, ethics and moral theology. They counsel the doubtful and comfort the sorrowful. They speak out for justice. They support, influence, and take responsibility for difficult projects and controversial causes.

The first Sisters of Mercy in Belize arrived in the country on the morning of January 20, 1883 abroad the ship “City of Dallas”. Earlier, in December 1879, two Jesuit priests visited the Motherhouse of the Sisters of Mercy in New Orleans, USA requesting the Sisters to teach the children in Belize. Obstacles prevented the Sisters from committing themselves to the request, although the Sisters were deeply touched by the dire need for formal education in the British colony. In June 1882, however, the Sisters had a more promising response, and on January 14, 1883, seven Sisters of Mercy set sail for Belize to establish the first convent of their institute between the Tropics and to establish schools.

The Sisters of Mercy in Belize have given much to this country, even outside the realms of education. In addition to sponsoring St. Catherine’s Academy in Belize City and Muffles College in Orange Walk Town, the Sisters also sponsor the St. Cecilia’s Home for the Elderly, the Mercy Kitchen, the Mercy Clinic, and the Our Lady of Guadalupe Mercy Centre.