"THERE is no charity where there is no respect for the poor" was one of the favourite sayings of that remarkable woman Mary Aikenhead
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the death of the founder of the Religious Sisters of Charity, who was born in Grand Parade, Cork in 1787, and whose life spanned a remarkable period in the history of Ireland and Europe.
Cork at the time of of Mary's birth was a port city of 80,000 people, and the city burghers were mostly Protestants. Under the Penal Laws, England was still imposing severe trading restrictions, with thousands of tradesmen idle and hungry. Mary was born into a privileged Ascendancy family of four. Her father, a Scots Protestant, was a doctor and apothecary, while her mother came from an old Catholic Cork family, the Stacpoles.
Mary seems to have been a frail child and she was fostered out to a devout Catholic woman, Mrs Mary Rorke, on Eason's Hill, somewhat more salubrious than Grand Parade, where Mary mixed with the poorer Catholic children of the city, an experience which had a profound effect on her life. She had been received into the Anglican Communion, but her father converted to Catholicism just before he died, and a few months later, Mary was baptised a Catholic. When she returned to her family and home, and began going to church rather than chapel (as Catholic churches were then called), even at at early age she noted the great difference between the pampered life of the wealthy and the pathetic lives of the poor.
Going to Mass one Sunday in the South Chapel, when about 13, Mary was greatly influenced by a sermon given by Dr Florence McCarthy, Coadjutor Bishop of Cork, on the parable of Dives and Lazarus. Over her teenage years she struggled with her soul and calling, and at the age of 22, she met Fr Daniel Murray, the future archbishop of Dublin, and a champion of the poor. At this time Rome had imposed "enclosure" on religious orders - the poor could be taught in the schools attached to their convents but the freedom to visit the sick poor was now removed. Fr Murray thought about establishing a new order along the lines of the French Daughters of Charity.
Eventually Mary agreed to head up the proposed new order, and selected the famous Bar Convent in York for a training ground for the future Sisters of Charity.
She left her beloved Cork for Dublin and the fledgling congregation set up in Dublin, on North William Street off Summerhill.
In September 1816, Mary took her perpetual vows, including one to devote her life to helping the poor.
In 1821 the governor of Kilmainham Gaol invited two of the sisters to visit and talk to two women sentenced to death for murder - quite a common occurrence then, as were executions, such as those of the two women.
From then on, prison visitation became an important part of the sisters' work. Mary Aikenhead also founded St Vincent's Hospital on Stephen's Green, the first hospital in the English-speaking world to be managed and staffed by Catholic nursing sisters.
Mary now began to suffer inflammation of the spine at the age of 44, yet in the meantime had to deal with ecclesiastical politics and the regular undermining of her work. Nevertheless she continued her labours. Then came the mission to Australia.
Up to this point there were no women religious of any kind in Australia, but in August 1838 a party of four priests, five Sisters of Charity and three seminarians set sail to Sydney - a trip which took four-and-a-half months - to care for the needs of female convicts in the penal colonies. The new community prospered and went on to found hospitals and schools across the continent as well as foreign missions in Papua New Guinea, Fiji and across the Pacific.
In England, the Sisters of Charity went on to establish 15 convents, covering all the work of the congregation.
Convents were also opened in Waterford, where the sisters worked with the poor and starving during the Great Famine, in Clarinbridge in Galway and in Clonmel.
Mary's health deteriorated further in the early 1840s. Now 58, in constant pain, and yet working daily up to the time of her death, Mary did everything she could to alleviate the plight of those who flocked to the convent during the Famine.
An indefatigable writer - by means of a quill, which still can be seen in the heritage centre at Our Lady's in Harold's Cross - Mary continued to communicate with all her congregation in her last years.
She died on 22nd July, 1858, 43 years after taking her vows.
A farmer in the south of the country wrote to one of his relatives, a member of the Sisters of Charity, that in Mary Aikenhead "Ireland's poor have lost their best friend".
She is buried in the cemetery attached to St Mary Magdalene's in Donnybrook.
There is a substantial bibliography of Mary Aikenhead but for the purposes of this article I have largely relied on Mary Aikenhead, Servant of the Poor by Donal S Blake, the distinguished writer and education historian, and a Christian Brother.
"Solidarity for Tomorrow", an open forum celebrating Mary Aikenhead's 150th anniversary was held at All Hallows College, Drumcondra on Saturday, July 26th.
Speakers included Sr Stanislaus Kennedy from Focus Ireland, Martin Kalungu-Banda of Oxfam and Fr Brendan Comerford SJ of the Milltown Institute.