Martin O'BrienWhen the Congregation of Bon Secours arrived in Belfast 142 years ago this month their leadership could not have envisaged how their sole surviving sister in the city today, Sr Consilia Dennehy, would, more than 100 years later, reimagine their traditional healing charism to meet the particular needs of people during some very dark days – and beyond.
For Sr Consilia’s ministry continues well into post-conflict Northern Ireland nearly two decades after she completed pioneering work as a parish sister in St Agnes’ Parish, west Belfast, that had lasted almost 15 years, from the 1981 hunger strikes until 1995, just after the ceasefires.
And she has refined her ministry further in recent years to reflect not just the reality of her age – she is a sprightly 78-year-old – but also to address the needs of people as they struggle with everyday concerns on top of the particular consequences of conflict.
Sr Consilia, who has lived on her own in a little house in the heart of the parish since 1995 while remaining a fully participating Bon Secours sister, is naturally not as active as she once was.
She describes her ministry today as “the ministry of presence”.
“Some of my best work is at the bus stop. You can really listen to people there.”
Frightened
It was fitting that this remarkable Cork woman, who arrived “frightened, a total stranger with no job description” in the middle of the hunger strikes was honoured by Belfast’s outgoing Lord Mayor, Councillor Máirtín Ó Muilleoir at a special ceremony in the City Hall on the mayor’s final day in office last month.
He presented her with the Belfast Ambassador Award “in recognition of your outstanding service and dedication working tirelessly for the whole community of Belfast for the past 33 years”.
The citation on the award certificate added: “Adapting your congregation’s healing charism with courage and creativity to the needs of Belfast, you have promoted peace and justice, cross community initiatives, and served the needs of the sick, prisoners, people with special needs, the homeless, and victims of violence throughout the city.”
The many people right across the religious and cultural divide who know and love Sr Consilia thought the award was richly deserved, marking the contribution of a person of independent thought, dedication and integrity who exudes Christian love.
Sr Consilia says: “I was very very touched that anyone would even think of giving me an award. I have given my all for 33 years and that was an award enough. I learnt so much from the people over that time, people everywhere of all religions and none and I was quite content with that.”
She says she accepted the award on behalf of all the people she worked with over the years.
While Sr Consilia has always been more comfortable “as a background person” she does not attribute this to “false humility”.
“I believe you can lead from the back as well as from the front.”
She is passionate about the collaborative ministry promised by Vatican II: “Alone we are never enough, together we are more than enough.”
And she is “glad the clerical power-hungry Church is dying out albeit slowly”.
An admirer of Pope St John XXIII, Consilia is excited by Pope Francis – “a man of God with a real vision for change”. She liked him introducing himself as Bishop of Rome.
She is fearful for his safety against “elements in the Vatican who may not want him there and I pray for his protection from evil”.
However, “for all his compassion and simplicity he doesn’t seem to ‘get it’ about women, not yet any way, the jury is still out on that”.
One Protestant figure says: “Consilia has a grasp and understanding of Protestantism that I have not often seen in many Catholics. She recognises the psyche and cultural dimensions of Protestantism.”
That person spoke for many in Belfast, not to mention the parishioners of St Agnes’, when she added: “I can only imagine the number of lives Consilia touches in a day, in her home, her parish, shopping, praying and observing the world around her.
“She is attentive to your words and has a gentle voice that masks a question to unlock your very soul.”
Healing
If unlocking the soul brings healing no one is happier than Sr Consilia, the daughter of a small farmer born in Ballinora, outside Cork city and great grandniece of Mother Sulpice Hayes who oversaw the establishment of the Bon Secours Hospital in Cork in 1915.
She sensed a vocation from the age of 11 and “ran away from it for 10 years” becoming a trainee hotel manageress “falling in and out of love several times, dancing every night and almost becoming engaged”.
Before Belfast she saw healing as “attending to bodies in beds but I quickly expanded my understanding of healing to embrace body, mind and spirit”.
Sr Consilia has been a pastoral pioneer on probably an unprecedented scale that has included SPRED, the ministry for those with learning difficulties “which is very dear to my heart” and being Northern co-director of Conference of Religious of Ireland.
She had been sent to Belfast by the Provincial “as a contribution to justice and peace in Northern Ireland” with a brief to work in St Agnes’ where she ministered amid some of the worst horrors of the Troubles.
Most strikingly she recalls the horrific aftermath of the 1988 SAS executions in Gibraltar including Michael Stone’s murder of three mourners at Milltown cemetery and the subsequent murders by shooting and stabbing of two army corporals who received the Last Rites from the late Fr Alec Reid.
“Where were you the day of the corporals’ killings?” I ask.
“Don’t mention it,” she replies quietly before explaining she was in her home with the other nuns nearby.
“I had an awful headache that day and I had a sense something awful was happening. The next morning at Sunday Mass people were crying in the pews.”
Afterwards a large mural appeared on a gable near their church showing a man with an AK-47 rifle which “greatly offended” parishioners.
Early one morning she and the parish priest, the late Fr Tom Toner acquired lots of paint and took their courage – and paint brushes improvised from window poles – in both their hands and painted over the mural.
A group of youths came to her home to register their protest. “We had a good conversation over a cup of tea, they left and to my knowledge the mural was never replaced.”
Sr Consilia had broken new ground before she came to Belfast by getting special permission from her Mother Superior to care for her elderly parents at home for almost two years before their deaths within six weeks of each other in spring 1981.
“That would have pleased our founder Mother Josephine Potel who pioneered the idea of nuns caring for the sick and dying in their own homes.”
As a member of the Bon Secours Sr Consilia is obviously distressed by the recent revelations concerning the Tuam mother and baby home operated by her Congregation from 1925 to 1961 but is precluded from expressing a personal opinion on the matter.
She reiterates the content and sentiments of a statement issued by the Bon Secours Sisters in early June with a passion that a clinical written statement, penned in the third person plural, cannot convey.
“Obviously I was very shocked and deeply deeply saddened when the news came through. I do welcome the Government investigation to establish the full truth.”
Prayer
Sr Consilia describes her relationship with God as “a personal relationship nourished by prayer and by the people I meet”.
She admits her “awareness of a personal relationship with God who loves me unconditionally came slowly”.
“I often felt guilty despite my best efforts because I couldn’t measure up to the expectations of superiors.”
In her comfortable little house in the heart of Andersonstown she says “God’s greatest gift to me was to lift me out of Cork and plant me here”.
It is no surprise that the old proverb “bloom where you’re planted” is one of her favourites.
Numerous people hope Sr Consilia’s “ministry of presence” will continue to bloom for some time yet.