Greg Daly
Srs Marina, Sybil, Jasmine and Jooly from Portlaoise's new community of Ursuline Sisters of Mary Immaculate, with - in the rear row- their provincial Sr Vinaya and Sr Jyopsma, both of whom will return to Kerala, India, later this month. Mission has come ‘full circle’
An influx of new religious communities has been hailed as offering new life to the Irish Church, and bringing Ireland’s missionary heritage back home.
Over the past year at least four groups of religious women have set up in Ireland from abroad, the most recent being a community of Ursuline Sisters of Mary Immaculate from India who moved into a house in Portlaoise at the weekend.
Portlaoise parish priest Msgr John Byrne told The Irish Catholic the Ursuline Sisters from Kerala had been anxious to take on a missionary role, with things moving quickly after contact was made between the parish and the order this summer.
“We embraced the idea, a suitable house in an estate became available, and it all advanced very quickly,” he said.
Welcoming the sisters, Kildare and Leighlin’s Bishop Denis Nulty said that “in the past religious orders have made tremendous contributions to healthcare and education – maybe their great contribution in the 21st Century is to be a counter-cultural presence.”
The first of the current influx of new religious communities to Ireland came in May 2016, with the arrival in Waterford of a group of women from the US-based Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
“They’re very aware of the debt that the United States owes to Ireland, but not only the States, internationally the Irish Church has given great service,” Bishop Phonsie Cullinan told The Irish Catholic, adding, “It’s full circle – they are coming back to evangelise us.”
Describing how the sisters have been received in Waterford, where they are “full of joy and making various natural connections with all sorts of people, being welcomed into schools and parishes, and by older sisters who see the life they bring”.
In Limerick, meanwhile, the arrival last year of a group of Nashville, Tennessee’s Dominican Sisters of St Cecilia has “really brought a great injection of energy”, according to Bishop Brendan Leahy, who praised the sisters’ “warm lively joy that speaks to people”.
Such injections, Elphin’s Bishop Kevin Doran said earlier this year when welcoming a group of Servant Sisters of the Home of the Mother from Spain to Roscommon, are “not about going back to ‘the way it was’”, but about going forward.