A lifetime of trust

Saturday, 1st January 2011

A Roman Catholic nun is required to take vows of poverty, celibacy and obedience. Could any three commitments seem less attractive nowadays to a young Western woman, religiously-minded or not? How many parents, however devout, would want such a life for their daughter? In modern-day Australia the answer is, of course, almost none — and understandably so.

Yet, curiously, it is also the case that nuns are held in high esteem across all sections of society (much more so than priests). Furthermore, many nuns report high levels of contentment, despite the sacrifices they make.

One such person is Sister Angela Mary, the redoubtable and much-admired Sister Administrator of Brisbane’s Mater Public Hospitals from 1966 to 1993. She is now in her mid-eighties. Although well-known in Queensland, her name will likely be unfamiliar to most other Australians. But her remarkable life story, clearly and modestly told in Mercy, Mater & Me, deserves to be read.

This book helps to explain how a vital and intelligent woman could live her whole adult life as a nun and — for the most part — genuinely enjoy it.

Kathleen Doyle was born in 1925 at Six Crosses, her parents’ farmhouse in County Clare, Ireland. She was the fourth of nine children. Her family was close and fun- loving, but money was tight and life was a struggle. One of Kathleen’s siblings, Eileen, died of pneumonia aged nine months, and another was stillborn. Kathleen’s formal education ceased at the end of primary school.

In October 1941, at 16, she left home to train with the Dublin-based Sisters of Mercy. She spent six years at a convent in Timoleague in County Cork, coping with cold, undernourishment, loneliness, homesickness and strict regimentation. ‘There seemed,’ she recalls ruefully, ‘to be a belief in those days that pain endured was an essential element in the formation of young sisters.’

After qualifying as a novice in 1946, Kathleen adopted her religious name of Sister Angela Mary. The following year, in May, she and eight other sisters embarked on a five-week sea-voyage to Australia, to take up positions within the Order’s Brisbane congregation. It was an arduous and eventful journey, and also a profoundly sad one: ‘We believed we would never see Ireland, our homes, or our families again.’

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