AMID "many shattered people", Sister Trish Franklin had never expected to find herself working in Thai refugee camps or teaching English and swimming to Vietnamese children for 20 years.
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But Sister Franklin kept going with the twists in her life, trusting this was where she was supposed to be.
Sister Franklin, in speaking with Loreto College students ahead of International Women's Day, said her way to keep going amid so much trauma was to have a four-fold focus on justice: to have right relations with her faith, herself, others and the environment.
She now takes inspiration from the likes of the only female Melbourne Cup-winning jockey Michelle Payne and Opera Australia stagehand Olivia Sellars, fellow inductees into this year's Loreto College Women in Time roll call.
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Sister Franklin drew on the words Mary Ward, Sisters of Loreto founder, that women in time will do much.
"It was as if she catapulted all women to make changes in our world," Sister Franklin said. "We have done this, we are doing this and we will continue to do much."
Sister Franklin said Ms Sellars' words to embrace your fear and Ms Payne's message to chase your dream were great inspiration for women to do anything.
She continued to be humbled by recognition for her life's work in religious and social justice leadership and said she held a deep love for the Loreto community.
Growing up in Ballarat, becoming a prefect and captain of Loreto's Mulhall house, Sister Franklin left school wanting to be a teacher for children with special needs.
During her pre-training year with what is now Ballarat Special School, she started to seriously consider becoming a Loreto sister.
Life "took a big turn" when she ventured into refugee camps in the mid-1980s assisting Cambodian, Vietnamese, Laotian and Burmese refugees. Sister Franklin's focus became the unaccompanied minors section, predominantly children who had been pushed off-shore by their parents.
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Stories stuck with her, like meeting one young woman who was taken off a boat where pirates had forced women to strip naked, covered them in newspaper then raped them day and night.
This girl was discarded into the sea but managed to survive clinging to an enormous plastic bottle until her rescue.
There was also the boy whose leg had been deeply ulcerated and under threat of amputation until Sister Franklin convinced doctors to let her tend to cleaning the wound.
These children have grown into adults with their own families but also sparked a change in Sister Franklin's own ministry. One planned year teaching English to Vietnamese street children became 20. She founded the Loreto children's charity, helping more than 90,000 children.
Leaving Vietnam for Melbourne in 2015, "old and tired" Sister Franklin relishes open-water swimming at Williamstown and following the AFL. To keep highlighting achievements in people's lives, for Sister Franklin, remains "just wonderful".
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