A school woven into Machghara’s history
The Sisters of the Sacred Hearts School occupies a distinctive place in Machghara’s collective memory because it is not simply a contemporary educational institution. Its presence reaches back to the beginning of the twentieth century. The strongest institutional reference currently available is the Congregation’s official website, which lists the Machghara establishment as “N. Dame du Bon Conseil – Collège” and gives the year 1904.
This article therefore treats 1904 as the strongest official date for the Congregation’s school presence in Machghara. Salvatorian sources and later published memories, however, raise questions about stages of foundation, expansion, and reorganisation. Rather than merging those references into an unsupported single story, the article presents each piece of evidence in its proper context.
Missionary roots and the education of girls
The Machghara school belongs to a broader history of missionary education in Lebanon. The Congregation records the return of the Jesuits to the East in 1831 and the formation of two local women’s groups within their missionary environment: the Mariamettes in Bikfaya in 1853 and the Poor Daughters of the Sacred Heart in Zahle in 1857. The two groups were united in 1874 as the Congregation of the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary.
The Congregation explicitly places girls’ education at the heart of this early mission at a time when formal education for girls was extremely limited. Teaching, catechesis, and formation were central from the beginning, later expanding into social, health, and pastoral work. The foundation in Machghara should therefore be understood as part of a nineteenth-century Lebanese educational network that gradually spread to numerous towns and villages.
Machghara’s church-school environment around the turn of the century
Salvatorian sources show that organised church schooling already existed in Machghara around the same period. The Salvatorian Synaxar states that Father Mikhael Serhal, ordained in 1899, first served in Machghara as a teacher and head of a school before becoming parish priest, remaining in the town for nine years. The source does not identify that school as the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts School, so the two institutions should not be automatically equated.
The same source records Father Athanasius Jamed teaching at the “episcopal school in Machghara” in 1912. These references indicate that more than one church-related educational framework existed in the town, an important caution when reading old sources that refer simply to “the school in Machghara.”
1904: the Congregation’s official date for Machghara
In the Congregation’s official list of Lebanese educational establishments, Machghara appears clearly as “N. Dame du Bon Conseil – Collège (1904) – MACHGHARA.” It sits among a network of long-established schools, making 1904 a direct institutional reference rather than a later journalistic estimate or an oral tradition.
Notre Dame du Bon Conseil means Our Lady of Good Counsel, the identity preserved in the school’s modern Arabic administrative name. In everyday local usage, the simpler name “Sisters of the Sacred Hearts School” or “Sacred Hearts – Machghara” became equally familiar.
Father Nicolas Barcha and the girls’ school
The Salvatorian Synaxar provides a crucial second line of evidence through the biography of Father Nicolas Barcha. Born in Sidon in 1866 and ordained in 1894, he served in several church roles and was exiled by the Ottoman authorities to Baalbek during the First World War because of his friendship with France. The Synaxar states that late in his life he served Machghara, repaired its church, and “founded a school for girls administered by the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts.”
Father Barcha died in Machghara in 1932. This testimony directly links him to a girls’ school under the Sisters’ administration, but it does not give a foundation year and places the event late in his life, later than the Congregation’s 1904 date for its Machghara establishment.
How should 1904 and Father Barcha’s account be reconciled?
The currently available evidence does not resolve the exact relationship between the two references. The Congregation may have begun its Machghara establishment in 1904 and later experienced a new administrative foundation, relocation, expansion, or reorganisation under Father Barcha. It is also possible that the sources refer to two overlapping educational stages or institutions.
These are interpretations, not established facts. This article therefore does not claim that Father Barcha founded the school in 1904, nor does it dismiss the Salvatorian statement about his founding of a girls’ school. Resolving the issue requires primary records from the Congregation, parish, or eparchy identifying the first Sisters, the first premises, and the chronology of each stage.
What about the modern “102 years” account?
On 7 September 2026, journalist Ghassan Hajjar wrote in An-Nahar about his former school in Machghara and described it as having educated generations for “one hundred and two years.” Read literally from 2026, that figure points to roughly 1924, a period closer to the later years of Father Barcha’s life.
The phrase appears in a personal contemporary essay rather than a foundation register, so it should not replace the Congregation’s institutional date of 1904. Its value lies in preserving alumni memory and confirming the school’s century-long place in the town, while also highlighting the documentary gap between the official institutional date and later local recollections.
Names and the school’s modern administrative identity
Lebanon’s Center for Educational Research and Development lists the Sacred Hearts presence in Machghara today through two educational units that share the same broad identity, address, and telephone number. One is Our Lady of Good Counsel of the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts; the other is the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts Intermediate School.
This helps explain the different names encountered in historical and modern sources. “Our Lady of Good Counsel” preserves the Notre Dame du Bon Conseil institutional tradition, while “Sisters of the Sacred Hearts School” remains the best-known local description of the school and Congregation.
The school in the current CRDP directory
The CRDP directory lists the free private unit “Our Lady of Good Counsel of the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts” as school number 5320. It is coeducational, located on Machghara’s main road, and lists French as its first foreign language. The published data show 14 classes across kindergarten and the first two cycles, with 294 pupils. The directory also lists 19 teachers and administrators on permanent staff, 6 on contract, and 8 licensed members of the teaching staff.
The “Sisters of the Sacred Hearts Intermediate School,” number 7823, is a coeducational non-free private unit covering the third cycle, with French- and English-language classes. The directory lists 6 classes and 92 pupils, with 6 teachers and administrators on permanent staff, 13 on contract, and 15 licensed members of the teaching staff. Both units use the telephone number 08-650188 and the same Machghara main-road location, reflecting a single educational presence organised through more than one administrative unit.
A statistical snapshot from an earlier period
A table published by Information International in a study of free private schools provides an earlier snapshot of the institution’s scale. Its row for Our Lady of Good Counsel of the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts in Machghara records 345 pupils and 26 teachers and administrators, with the table dividing the staff into 21 permanent and 5 contract or contribution positions.
These figures should not be compared directly with the current CRDP data without accounting for different years, grade structures, and administrative divisions. Their importance lies in documenting that the Machghara school was also a relatively substantial educational institution in an earlier period.
1997: a major educational building project
Fouad Hanna & Associates documents a project titled “SSCC – Collège des Saints Cœurs – Machghara” in 1997 for the Congregation of the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts. The source gives an approximate area of 15,000 square metres and describes the project as a preschool and primary school.
AAA – Atelier des Architectes Associés is listed as architect, while Fouad Hanna & Associates provided mechanical design and supervision. The record establishes a major educational construction or development project in 1997, but does not by itself prove that 1997 was the date the school moved into its present campus or formally opened it. It is therefore presented as a documented building project rather than an unsupported opening date.
Educational and cultural life beyond the classroom
The An-Nahar archive preserved by the American University of Beirut Libraries lists an item in the 29 June 1999 issue titled “Student works at the Sacred Hearts – Machghara.” The open catalogue does not provide the article’s full text, but it documents the school’s continuing educational and cultural activity at the end of the 1990s.
In 2015, the Congregation’s religious education centre documented a joint project between Sacred Hearts – Machghara and Al-Hussein School in Sohmor, affiliated with Al-Mabarrat. The programme began with a delegates’ meeting on 17 October 2015 around the theme of mercy, including introductions, paired work, and planning for shared meetings. The initiative illustrates the school’s role as a space for educational and social encounter across different religious environments in West Bekaa.
A visible institution in Machghara’s public life
On 11 December 2024, Lebanon’s National News Agency identified Sister Colette Moughabghab as head of the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts secondary school in Machghara among those attending a thanksgiving Mass for the return of residents to the town. Her presence in such a public event reflects the institution’s integration into Machghara’s social, religious, and civic fabric.
Published alumni testimonies likewise portray the school as an institution that educated generations from the wider area and whose local importance is associated not only with instruction but also with encounter, openness, and community life.
War damage and the struggle to continue
In a 2026 article titled “In the Heart of Pain, Hope Is Born,” the Congregation reported that shelling directed at the area immediately opposite the Machghara school caused severe material damage to classrooms, equipment, electrical networks, and educational spaces, threatening normal learning conditions.
According to the same source, alumni helped clean the damaged facilities and reduce the effects of destruction, while the Sisters maintained contact and moral support after attacks. The Generalate continued seeking funding to sustain the school, especially teachers’ salaries, and the school reported a commitment by Machghara Municipality to help repair major damage after hostilities end.
The article was signed by school director Sister Colette Moughabghab and framed the school’s survival as the continuation of an educational mission across generations, not merely the repair of a damaged building.
“My School”: an alumnus reflects on what the institution means
In his An-Nahar essay “My School,” published on 7 September 2026, Ghassan Hajjar revisited his relationship with the Machghara school as an alumnus, moving from childhood memories to a later sense of belonging and responsibility toward the institution. He also drew attention to wartime damage and the need to secure its future.
For Machghara’s history, the testimony matters less as a source for an exact founding year than as evidence of the school’s social meaning: an institution that sent generations into different walks of life and remained associated with learning, reason, encounter, openness, and humanity.
The school’s place in the history of Machghara
Taken together, the sources show the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts School as one of Machghara’s oldest continuing educational institutions. Its mission emerged from a Congregation for which girls’ education was a foundational purpose, later developing into coeducational schooling organised across multiple administrative units and serving generations from the town and surrounding area.
Its story also opens a wider window onto Machghara itself: the coexistence of several church schools at the beginning of the twentieth century, the relationship between religious congregations, parish life, and local society, the growth of educational infrastructure, cross-community initiatives, and the modern struggle to preserve local institutions through economic crisis and war.
Questions still awaiting archival evidence
Important questions remain unresolved without primary archival records: Who were the first Sisters assigned to Machghara? Who requested the establishment in 1904? Where was the first school building? What exactly was the relationship between the 1904 establishment and the girls’ school the Salvatorian source attributes to Father Nicolas Barcha? When were the two present administrative units created?
The connection between the 1997 project and the school’s present campus likewise requires plans or an official Congregation record. This article should therefore remain open to revision if Congregation archives, parish records, dated photographs, school registers, or documented testimony from former Sisters and alumni become available.