To be a woman of prayer, a top-class surgeon and a role model for women in developing countries was the unique achievement of Sr Mary Stella (Patricia Phelan), who died on January 1st aged 75.
She was Superior General of the Medical Missionaries of Mary from 1969 to 1973 - but far more important was her indefatigable work in medicine both before and since.
She was born in Tarbert, Co Kerry, in 1925, the eldest daughter of Nora and Robert Phelan. She went to the local primary school and then to Loreto Convent, Killarney.
She decided to study medicine and became a medical student at University College Cork. And while it was not a rarity in the early 1940s for a woman to study medicine, it was not common either. Her undeniable excellence as a surgeon takes on an additional significance in the light of the scepticism with which the role of women in professions such as surgery was viewed by many at that time.
But that was in the future. While Patricia Phelan was still at UCC, as a fourth-year medical student, she met Mother Mary Martin, the foundress of the Medical Missionaries of Mary. The congregation was still young - its medical work in Africa had begun only nine years previously in 1937.
She completed her studies at University College Dublin and then joined the congregation, where she took the name Sr Mary Stella. She was academically brilliant, obtaining first place in her final medical examinations at UCD, and at examinations for each of her subsequent qualifications: the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in 1962, the M.Ch. at UCD in 1963, and the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons in England, the same year.
In 1950, she went with Mother Mary Martin to establish a congregation in the United States, beginning with Boston, at the invitation of Cardinal Cushing.
Her first medical assignment abroad began in 1953 at St Luke's, a teaching hospital at Anua, in south-eastern Nigeria. St Luke's was the congregation's flagship hospital. She later helped develop hospitals at Dareda in Tanzania and Kitovu, Uganda.
The 1960s brought her back to Ireland, where she was medical superintendent at the International Missionary Training Hospital at Drogheda (since transferred to the North Eastern Health Board), between 1964 and 1967. Along with fellow surgeon Vincent Sheehan and other colleagues, she succeeded in having the hospital affiliated with the Royal College of Surgeons.
She succeeded the foundress as superior general in 1969 at a time of ferment both in the church generally and in religious orders following Vatican Two. She remained in the post for almost four years. However, her direct style of management, appropriate to the operating theatre, did not always sit happily with the more collegiate post-Vatican atmosphere of the time and it was a stressful period for her. Nevertheless, she oversaw a major expansion of the congregation's work abroad, including 10 new foundations in countries as far apart as Brazil and Ethiopia.
Her next posting was to Yemen, where she worked for two years as consultant surgeon at Al-Olofi Hospital with the Yemen Ministry of Health. Health considerations forced a return to a more temperate climate and she was posted to London. During the past two decades, as a member of the congregation's community at Ealing, she worked at the London Hospital, Whitechapel, Charing Cross Hospital and Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. Though technically retired, she continued to work and held a hospital clinic until last December.
While her life, after she qualified, was that of an excellent surgeon and a busy manager, she managed to put prayer at the centre of that life. Through it she developed an inner strength and calm manifested in the graciousness and serenity she brought to her work.
Her patients took first place and she was always ready to assure and explain, to alleviate pain and ensure they experienced a high level of post-operative care, which she considered of great importance.
She is survived by her sisters, Margaret (nee Farrington) and Elizabeth (nee Ryan).
Sr Mary Stella (Patricia Phelan): born 1925; died, January 2001