
Sister Teresa Towey
1935 – 2015
Born: 6th February 1935
Entered Religious Life: 6th October 1958
Died: 20th September 2015
Winifred Teresa, daughter of John Towey and Brigid Donoghue, was born in Towneymuckla, Co. Roscommon, on 6th February 1935. She entered the Novitiate in Milltown on the 6th October 1958. On 30th April 1959 she received the habit and the name Mary Soubirous. Some years later she returned to her baptismal name, Teresa. She made her first profession on 2nd May 1961.
Sr. Teresa spent a short time in Sowerby Bridge, Yorkshire, immediately after profession. Apart from this her entire life was spent ministering in the Irish Province. After her time in Sowerby Bridge she returned to Milltown and attended Carysfort Training College. Having graduated from Carysfort in 1964 she spent four years in Basin Lane, Dublin, followed by two years in Waterford and five years in Blarney, Co. Cork, during which she attended a night course in UCC and obtained a Diploma in Catechetics. Between 1975 and 1990 she taught at Stanhope Street, Bray and Walkinstown.
During the following year she was based in Gardiner Street while attending lectures in Mater Dei Institute. From 1991 to 2009 she was School Chaplain in Baldoyle, after which she retired to Gardiner Street. Throughout her ministry in education she was a gentle presence in whatever school she happened to be in and she always had a great love for the children.
Teresa was a woman of great faith. She liked to visit places dedicated to Our Lady and often arranged her holidays around such a visit. After her retirement to Gardiner Street she frequently visited the sisters in places like Lakelands and St. Monica’s and she also provided companionship and support to members of the community in Gardiner Street. Her request to move to Lakelands came as a surprise to the sisters in Gardiner Street and she was greatly missed by all. Some weeks after her departure they heard that the sister-in-charge in Lakelands had said ‘she would love to have ten of Sr. Teresa’ and they knew then she was happy and that she had made the right decision.
During her time in Lakelands she endeared herself to everyone – sisters and staff alike – by her gentle presence and her delightful smile. At that stage her health was failing and her power of speech was impaired. It must have been extremely frustrating for her to be unable to articulate what she wanted to say, but she accepted that trial with patience and resignation.
Teresa had a very dedicated family. She loved small children and her grandnieces and grandnephews loved to visit her. Her love for children, so much in evidence during her teaching days continued to the end with her young relatives. She is greatly missed by them.
On the 20th September, after some days in which her health was visibly declining, Teresa died peacefully at home in Lakelands. Her remains were received back in the Convent Chapel on Monday 21st and she was removed to Star of the Church in Sandymount on Tuesday 22nd for her Requiem Mass. She was laid to rest in the community in Donnybrook. May her dear soul 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.