Sister Marie Bernadette O’Leary
Sister Marie Bernadette O’Leary1931 – 2018
Born: 14th December 1931
Entered Religious Life: 11th October 1954
Died: 15th February 2018
Winifred Margaret O’Leary, daughter of Maurice O’Leary and Catherine Canty was born in Douglas, Co. Cork on the 14th December 1931. She was educated in St. Angela’s College on Patrick’s Hill. She entered the Religious Sisters of Charity on the 11th October 1954 and was received as a Novice on 2nd May 1955 when she was given the name Sr. Marie Bernadette. She made her First Profession on the 11th May, 1957.
Sr. Marie Bernadette trained as a teacher before she entered. After her profession she spent a few months teaching in Clonmel before moving to Foxford. In September 1959 she was missioned to Mountjoy Street where she taught for two years. In August 1961 Sr. Marie Bernadette was missioned to Zambia where she taught in Chivuna for seven years before moving to Roma in January 1968 where she lived and ministered until her return to Milltown in July 1980. A former student in Roma recalls her as someone who was quiet or soft spoken. She was a very dedicated and committed teacher who worked hard and quietly to pass on that spirit to the girls. Her efforts in the development of the girl child were appreciated and she did a lot in a quiet way, whether in the class room or as House Mistress.
Between September 1980 and May 1982 Sr. Marie Bernadette studied Spanish, first of all in Milltown and then moved to California to continue with her studies before being missioned to Venezuela in 1982. The mission in Venezuela began in 1980 and she spent nine years in a Catechetical/Pastoral role. Sr. Marie Bernadette liked singing and had trained choirs for many years in Zambia. She was asked to teach hymns to the children in Venezuela. The Venezuelan children and, indeed, the adults all like to sing but the harmony which Marie Bernadette was used to in Zambia was sadly missing and she found it very difficult not to be able to do more towards creating beautiful music. She was very attached to the people of Venezuela. During her time in Venezuela, she had many health issues and returned to Ireland for good in July 1991.
Between October 1991 and March 2017 Marie Bernadette was devoted to the Cause of Mary Aikenhead and the Archives. Sr. Marie Bernadette together with Sr. Martha Magdalen Power worked on the Positio, the document which had to be presented to Rome regarding the Cause for the Beatification and Canonization of Mary Aikenhead. This was a huge volume of work and entailed hundreds of hours of research. It was completed in 1994 and presented in Rome. This was the document which eventually went to the Theologians and Cardinals before Mary Aikenhead was declared Venerable. After all this work it must have been a source of great joy when Mary Aikenhead was declared Venerable. Hopefully they will work together in Heaven to bring about the miracles needed for Beatification and Canonization.
When Milltown Convent closed in 1995, she moved to Lakelands and set up the new Archives in the Generalate at Caritas, Sandymount. When Park Avenue opened in August 2008 she moved there and remained living in Park Avenue until 2016 when her health began to fail. She returned to Lakelands and remained living there until March 2017 when she needed more care and moved to St. Monica’s Nursing Home, in Belvedere Place. Sr. Marie Bernadette had a wonderful memory and probably knew more about Mary Aikenhead than anybody in the Congregation.
Apart from the Archives Sr Marie Bernadette had two other ministries that were dear to her heart. For many years she was a member of the Church Archivists Association of Ireland and served as honorary secretary for most of her time on the committee. She was very dedicated to this Association and put many hours of work into organising outings, talks and the AGM.
Each Friday afternoon she visited the patients in the Royal Hospital, Donnybrook. This was a ministry of the Novices and Marie Bernadette took it over when the novitiate in Milltown closed and she continued her visits until about a year before her death. Apart from the Friday visits she organised a gift for each patient at Christmas and in later years involved the 6th class children from the Scoil Mhuire to help with singing carols and distributing gifts.
Sr. Marie Bernadette was very happy in St. Monica’s Nursing Home and endeared herself to all the staff there. They spoke very affectionately of her prayerfulness and how she helped them through her prayer and acceptance of her failing health. Her family were very supportive at this time and her cousins who were like sisters to her visited her on a weekly basis.
She died very peacefully in St. Monica’s Nursing Home on the 15th February 2018. Her remains were returned to Lakelands for Evening Prayer and she was removed to Star of the Sea Church, Sandymount on Saturday 17th February for her Requiem Mass. She is buried in the community cemetery in Donnybrook.
May she rest in peace.
Sr. Joseph Helen Cunningham.
We are standing this morning on holy ground: the place where Mary Aikenhead spent the last years of her life as an invalid – a woman whose vision, courage and practical common-sense gave birth to our Congregation and to our long and graced history of service of the poor, the weak and the vulnerable.Today we are celebrating the life of Sr. Joseph Helen, a woman who cherished that charism, serving those in need with fidelity and generosity, and who also spent the last years of her life here in the Hospice.
The readings this morning are both comforting and challenging.In the Gospel Jesus speaks of himself as the Way, the Truth and the Life.He invites us to put our hope and our trust in Him and in His promise to be with us, steadily and constantly as we try each day to walk his way, to speak his truth, to live his life.It is an apt description of the life and commitment of the woman whom we are remembering here.
In her 103 years of life, Sr. Joseph Helen lived through historical and global changes that are impossible for us to imagine.She experienced seismic shifts in Church and state.She witnessed wars and famines on a world scale.Through all of those yearsshe remained steadfastly faithful to the constant core of who she was as an RSC.She was born Dorothy Cunningham in Ballacolla in Portlaoise on 1st July 1908. She was an only girl, with one brother, and was much loved by all.Her childhood and youth reflected the calm ordinariness of children’s lives at that time.Following her degree studies she spent some months caring for her mother who was ill and then secured a job teaching in Mountjoy St. School in Dublin.Her father was not impressed!His comment on hearing of that place was:“It doesn’t sound like much of a job but you like working for the poor and you’ve always been good at it”.She remained there until she entered the Sisters of Charity on 5th October 1931.
In the first reading we are told that God gives strength to the wearied; that those who hope in Yahweh will soar like eagles, run and no grow weary, walk and never tire.That was so true of J. Helen throughout her active life.She was missioned back to Mountjoy St. after her religious profession and taught there for 12 years.Following a year’s further study in Scotland, she went to teach in a Secondary Modern school inWalthamstow in England for a year.And then came the call to be one of our three founding Sisters of the Zambian Region, or Northern Rhodesia as it then was.
In 1948 they set sail, travelling for four weeks by boat – The Athlone Castle –rail, bus and lorry before arriving in Chisekesi Siding on a dark morning on 28th October 1948. Sr. Helen kept a diary of the journey which was printed for the 50th anniversary and which gives a fascinating insight into their journey and how they coped with, what was for them, such a strange and almost ‘alien’ environment.
One can only imagine the anticipation and anxiety, the challenge and the loneliness, the wonder and the doubts that marked that journey and her first months in Zambia.It was a place and people that she came to love and cherish.She committed herself to the education of girls and brought the gift of knowledge and freedom to countless women who still remember her with gratitude and appreciation.There are many past pupils with sad hearts in Zambia at the moment – their sadness at her passing tempered only by their gratitude that she is free from the debilities of her age.And that mourning is echoed this morning among our sisters there in the Region and here in this Chapel in the sisters who lived with her and shared her life for those 30 years.
Her first 15 years in Zambia were spent in the Teacher training college run by the Jesuits and began her work in promoting the education of girls – beginning with the setting up of a girls secondary boarding school in Roma in Lusaka.Nine years later she was appointed Regional Leader and on Independence day 1978she was conferred with the Order of Distinguished Service for 30 years of outstanding service to the people of Zambia in the fields of Education and Social work.
While she was a formidable woman in many ways, with high standards and expectations, her devotion to her religious life and her commitment to education was recognized and appreciated by all who knew her.She was a strict disciplinarian, spoke the truth without apology and demanded very high standards.At the same time her heart was compassionate and her generosity and hospitality were known and appreciated by all.
Like all of us, Helen has known suffering and joy, tears and laughter, pain and happiness, loneliness and friendship.And she had strong relationships with herfriends – too numerous to mention – but exemplified in the love and devotion of Sr. Mary Bernadette Collins and Catherine Fallon.Up to the end she valued and enjoyed her relationships with her nieces, nephews and other family members and followed their lives with interest, with love and with prayer.
In 1978 she was missioned to Ireland and worked on our Constitutions.Subsequently she was appointed as local leader to our community in Crumlin before her appointment to our Provincial Leadership team and consequent arrival here in Our Lady’s Mount in 1981.
Sr. J. Helen’s commitment to Mary Aikenhead’s charism was single-minded and she never compromised on that.The second reading confirms her attitude to life:nothing outweighs the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus. It is only through Him, with Him and in Him that we can find life and happiness and fulfilment.Rooted in that conviction, she endorsed and embraced anything that served the people for whom she cared in a better, more dignified or respectful way.
She suffered in her growing debility and weakness these last years and all of us – family, community, friends and colleagues – were saddened as we watched her suffering and her struggle to cope.In spite of the wonderful, caring staff who surrounded her and the sisters and friends who were her constant support,she had difficult and dispiriting days.Yet she never gave up .Her faith in Providence was the touchstone of her life.In the midst of all her pain and letting-go she was confident that he was with her, holding her, comforting her and in the end, calling her to himself.And when that call came, sheyielded her spirit to the Lord, peace-filled, calm and trusting – blest with a death that had no struggle, no pain, no fear.And perhaps I can end with some words of hers, written in the diary of which I spoke, on her arrival in Chikuni:“Now that we have reached our Promised Land we must thank God and Our Lady for our very pleasant and on the whole easy journey which we have had . . . . “Those words echo, not only the journey to Chikuni, but her life journey, now at its end as she moves, we believe, into the fullness of the Promised land of God’s life and love.
