Sister Teresa Ursula Kennedy
1922 – 2022
Born: 4th September 1922
Entered Religious Life: 11th October 1943
Died: 12th April 2022
Anna Kennedy, daughter of John Kennedy and Elizabeth Egan was born in Ballyroe, Tullaroan, Co. Kilkenny on 4th September 1922.
She entered the Religious Sisters of Charity in Milltown on 11th October 1943 and was received into the Novitiate on 29th August 1944 taking the name of Sr Teresa Ursula. She was professed on 30th August 1946.
Following profession she studied in Mountjoy Street for one year before beginning her teacher training in Carysfort College. Following her training she was missioned to Gardiner Street for one year and then taught in Lakelands, Milltown and Stanhope Street. In 1958 she moved to Crumlin and taught in Walkinstown school for four years. Following periods in Basin Lane, Stanhope Street and Tramore she moved to Milltown in 1968 where she taught in Farrenboley school. In 1972 she was appointed principal of the Josephian School in Mountjoy Street and continued in this post until 1986 when she was missioned to Stanhope Street. In 1988 she took a sabbatical and moved to Lakelands. While there she took up a post as supernumerary teacher in Scoil Mhuire primary school. She is remembered by many as a very kind teacher and a devoted principal in the Josephian School.
In 1990 she moved to Basin Lane and did outreach work at Mater Dei School as well as being a member of the parish team. She visited the homes and promoted friendly relations between school and home. She paid particular attention to new pupils for admission, children in First Holy Communion and Confirmation classes and sick pupils or sick parents, whether at home or in hospital. When Basin Lane closed in 1990 she moved to Mountshannon and continued her ministry there until she retired to Tramore in 2002.
In Tramore Sr Ursula continued to run a prayer Meeting and was very assiduous in preparing for this and in carrying it through. She also took Communion to some of the locals on the First Fridays.
In 2013 when Sr Ursula was in need of extra care she moved to the Mary Aikenhead Unit in Kilkenny. Here she continued to be interested in everything that happened and she liked to be involved in all that was going on.
She took up painting again and donated some of her work to the St Patrick’s Fund and the Cathedral restoration fund. She spent four very happy years there in retirement and moved to Lakelands in 2017 when Kilkenny closed.
She was a Kilkenny woman and had a keen interest in all GAA matches. She was very proud of the Kilkenny Hurlers. She knew each one of the team by name and was always ready to cheer them on. The highlight of each week for her was the Kilkenny People newspaper arriving in the post. This was read from cover to cover and the sports section studied in great depth.
Family were very important to Sr Ursula and she enjoyed many visits from family members and friends during her last two years when she was confined to bed. During her confinement she accepted willingly the care that she received from the very devoted staff in Lakelands. She was looking forward to her 100th birthday and was well advanced with her plans.
After a long and fulfilled life she died peacefully in the early hours of the morning of April 12th 2022. Her funeral Mass was celebrated in Star of the Sea parish church in Sandymount and she is buried in the community cemetery in Donnybrook. May she rest in peace.
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.
