THE CONTROVERSY over the display by the Player’s Lounge of a protest banner outside its Fairview premises against Queen Elizabeth’s state visit recalls another altogether more effusive banner that greeted the arrival of Queen Victoria’s vessel in Dublin on the evening of August 5th, 1849.
A contemporary account written by Dublin nun Mother Teresa Ball records how the Loreto Sisters (also known as the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary) in Dalkey responded to the news of the royal yacht’s arrival in the bay below their abbey en route to Kingstown: “At 6.30 o’clock pm, the Royal yacht came within sight of the grotto of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Dalkey. The nuns in ceremonial veils stood in ranks on the terrace opposite the sea. The novices and lay sisters wore white veils and the pupils were also attired in white with blue sashes.
"The Abbey bells rang a joyful peal. God Save the Queenwas melodiously chanted, accompanied by the harp and pianoforte. 'Welcome' was printed over the grotto. 'Go Teach All Nations' and 'God Save the Queen' waved from the Abbey, while cannon roared from the adjoining demesne. The Royal yacht rested and Her Majesty's convoy drew up, in the form of a crescent, opposite the Abbey where the flotilla remained for nine minutes."
It is a happy coincidence that as Queen Victoria’s great-great granddaughter makes a historic first visit here, the Loreto Sisters will at the same time be marking a special anniversary linked to Mother Teresa Ball. Last weekend, Loreto nuns from Ireland, the UK and Spain gathered at the grave of Mother Ball in Rathfarnham to mark the 150th anniversary of her death in Dalkey on May 19th, 1861.
She was one of a number of pioneering Irish religious women, such as Nano Nagle, Catherine McAuley and Mary Aikenhead, who were instrumental in establishing schools for the education of Irish Catholic women in an era still grappling with the prohibitions of the Penal Laws.
Dublin-born Teresa Ball was responsible for bringing the institute founded in 1609 by Venerable Mary Ward to Dublin in 1821 and from Ireland to places such as India (1841), Mauritius (1845), Canada (1847) and Manchester (1851). Today, Loreto schools and colleges around the world, including 30 in Ireland, educate some 70,000 students in such places as Sudan, Australia, Peru, the UK and Gibraltar. All look to Englishwoman Mary Ward as their foundress and honour Teresa Ball’s role in spreading the educational ideals of this pioneering 17th-century Yorkshirewoman.
Frances Ball was born on January 6th, 1794, the youngest of Dublin silk merchant John Ball and his wife Isabella’s six children. Their eldest daughter, Cecilia, was educated by the Ursuline nuns in Cork, who had arrived from France in 1771 at the invitation of Nano Nagle, who later founded the Presentation Sisters. However, in the wake of the 1798 and 1803 rebellions, travel from Dublin to Cork was deemed too dangerous and so Frances and her two sisters, Anna Maria and Isabella, were sent across the water to St Mary’s Bar Convent in York, which was run by the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, now known as the Congregatio Jesu.
Frances later returned there in 1814 to join the institute with the support of Archbishop Daniel Murray of Dublin. He had asked the sisters in York to make a foundation in Ireland to help address the dearth of Catholic schools for girls. But they were unable to accept his invitation due to their own circumscribed circumstances. However, they agreed to prepare Frances Ball for the role.
In 1821, Mother Teresa Ball, as Frances was now called, returned to Dublin and on November 4th, 1822, set up the first Irish foundation at Rathfarnham House. Designed by Edward Lovett, it was built in 1725 for William Palliser, who is reputed to have entertained Handel and Jonathan Swift on occasion. In the 1790s, the house was purchased by George Grierson, the king’s printer in Ireland. However, the Act of Union had caused Ireland’s economic fortunes to decline rapidly and by the time Teresa Ball came to reside there, the house was in a dilapidated state.
Armed with just three chairs and the Litany of Loreto – hence the name Loreto Sisters – she established her first school, which closed only in 1999. A “free” school, now known as Loreto Grange Road, was established alongside the boarding school in 1823 and in the initial years was subsidised by the fees of the boarders. This interconnection between fee-paying and free schools was a model which Teresa Ball replicated wherever she established schools, from St Stephen’s Green and Navan in 1833 to Toronto in Canada in 1847.
By the time of her death, Mother Ball had opened 37 convents and schools in Ireland and abroad and had turned down a further 14 invitations due to lack of personnel and financial resources.
From Loreto Rumbek in South Sudan, which opened its doors in 2006 and is the first secondary school for girls in the region, to St Aidan’s Community School in Brookfield, west Tallaght, the ideals of Teresa Ball and Mary Ward continue to resonate across the world. In 2004, when Nobel Peace laureate Wangari Maathai received her prize, she attributed her sense of social responsibility to her education by Loreto in Kenya.
As President Mary McAleese said in her 2009 tribute to the order’s role in bringing about educational and social change: “In their own quiet way, without ever saying it by running up a flag, Loreto has fomented something of a social revolution.”