Nos événements

Kandonklaar had been part of the parish of Deurne since the 14th century. It was not until 1893 that the diocese agreed to a request from around thirty inhabitants to be assigned to the parish of Borsbeek (St James' parish). When the population grew between the wars, some residents asked for an auxiliary parish and for a school to be built. Most of the children went to school in the centre or in Borsbeek.

One of these pioneers was August Volkaerts, then a resident of the Kandonklaar courtyard. When Volkaerts moved to Antwerp in 1934, he gave up the land needed to build a chapel. In the meantime, his gardener's house could be used as a presbytery and his garage as an emergency chapel. A cemetery could also be built on his property, and two streets were laid out (today Volkaertslei and Maria Clarastraat).

Volkaerts sold the Kandonklaar court in 1934 to the Annonciad Sisters of Huldenberg, who established a convent and built a girls' school there. At the request of the diocese, Omer Stas, assistant priest in Wijnegem, founded a new parish there the following year, the parish of Our Lady of the Annunciation. The first mass was celebrated in the newly-built chapel amid great interest. The baptismal font came from the emergency chapel of the Basilica of Koekelberg (Brussels) and the Stations of the Cross were drawn by Albert Raus, a local artist. The Annonciad Sisters also opened a kindergarten in one of the convent's outbuildings. The new chaplaincy was under Wommelgem supervision. The area along Ternesselei and the north had already been annexed to the parish of Saint Peter and Paul in 1893.